


you make my dreams come true

by zenstrike



Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [33]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Commitment, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, LGBTQ Themes, LOVE AND LOVING!, M/M, POV Lance (Voltron), adashi and red are also around, god okay this one is really about love, i mean it: L-O-V-E, lovesick fOOLS being in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Rachel gets married.or, Lance introduces Keith to his family and feels the world shift under his feet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HERE WE GO FOLKS I HOPE YOU ALL LIKE IT AND I AM SORRY IT HAS TAKEN SO LONG AND CONTINUES TO TAKE...TIME...

   Lance was four-years-old when his parents met Isabel McClain. He remembered very little of the actual meeting: he remembered his mother at the teetering podium at the front of a wood-worn lecture hall, and he remembered the colouring book his father handed him, and he remembered the wavering echo of his mother’s voice over the speakers. He remembered his mother presenting in Spanish, but that didn’t seem right when he reflected on it, and he remembered his father smoothing back his hair, but that didn’t seem right, either.

And he remembered Isabel, even if he didn’t have a name for her yet, standing up when his mother invited questions at the end of her presentation, and he remembered the dust in the light from the projector when he looked straight up at it.

Isabel had seemed so tall, and her voice so strong, and maybe that was why he remembered the shape of her back and the frizz of her ponytail and the way she spoke with her hands, even if he couldn’t remember what she asked or how his mother answered.

And after, when Lance’s father scooped him out of the cushy but still uncomfortable seat and they made their way to the front to say “hello” to Lance’s still-flustered mother, Lance remembered Isabel and the dark blue of her blazer and the quick way she had shaken his mother’s hand, and then the click of her heels when Isabel turned and left.

He had watched her go, with his arms tight around his father’s neck and his father’s arms tight around him, and he hadn’t thought much of her except that, yes, she was tall, and she walked with purpose, and that he liked the bounce of her hair as she left and the way the doors swung shut behind her with authority.

And then he had turned to smile at his mother and she had kissed his cheeks until Lance squirmed and laughed and then she had said: “Thank you for coming.”

And Lance had grinned and then he had had a lovely lunch with his parents—just him, just them, and the memory of his siblings and the thought of them at school buzzing around his head like fireflies.

***

Two days before they were due to fly out—fly home—and nine days before Rachel’s wedding, Lance woke with a sigh and a groan and flailed his hands into Keith’s empty spot before he even attempted to open his eyes.

“Lance?” came Hunk’s sleep-heavy voice.

“Ugh,” Lance replied and cracked his eyes open and dragged his palm against the spot where Keith was supposed to be. He scratched idly at the sheets, and then slipped—or slumped—out of bed.

Hunk rolled towards the wall and dragged the blankets over his head. “I can’t wait to have my own place,” he groaned, shuffling closer to the wall.

“Liar,” Lance said with all the affection he could muster. He leaned over and tucked the blankets tighter around Hunk’s back.

He went for a run.

It was hard.

His ears buzzed.

His muscles burned.

He came home to a note on the fridge from Hunk—“we need EGGS”—and he stretched in the empty bedroom and watched Red doze in her hovel for a bit and then he decided to take a shower.

Hunk had moved out of residence weeks ago. Classes had ended. Lance’s last paycheck for his dull house-painting work had been deposited and he wasn’t tutoring. Keith was at his last practice before the summer break. The result was a bustling apartment, full to the brim with noise and laughter and someone Lance could always reach for if he needed to. It made the moments like this—with the quiet, with the roar in Lance’s ears—seem loud.

He ran the water as hot as he could take it and clutched his shampoo bottle and frowned at the tiny lettering of the ingredients. His fingers squeaked against the plastic but he liked the give of the half-empty bottle and the heat of the water beating against the back of his head and his neck and the growing steam teasing his nostrils. It was easier to let go of thinking and just listen to the sound of the water falling and hitting and rushing. He could never quite get it right enough to explain: a swoosh, a kwoosh, a goosh.

He shook the bottle experimentally.

And maybe he had left the door open because he didn’t hear the squeaky handle or the squeaky hinges over the squeakiness of the bottle, which robbed him of any chance to be prepared for Keith dragging aside the shower curtain with drama and metallic clanking.

Lance squawked. Maybe shrieked.

He dropped his shampoo.

He and Keith looked down at it, and then back up at each other.

And Keith smiled.

“Go away!” Lance said, flicking water at him.

Keith seemed unaffected. “Did you wash your hair already?”

“Go away!”

“Can I do it?”

Lance scowled. “Why are you like this?”

Keith shrugged and replied: “Hang on, I’m coming in.” He pulled the curtain shut again with a plastic crash.

Lance scrambled to scoop up his shampoo bottle and shuffled further back under the stream of water. His hair stuck to his forehead and his cheeks were already starting to heat. “I didn’t invite you!”

“You didn’t have to,” came Keith’s voice on the other side of the shower curtain.

“The water’s super hot!”

“I can take it.”

“What if I say no!”

“Then I’ll go away.” Keith paused. “Duh.”

Lance hid his grin behind the shampoo bottle and said nothing more until Keith tore the curtain back again with another round of his special Keith-brand of drama.

“You probably stink.”

“Good thing I’m about to shower, then,” Keith replied flatly.

Lance laughed and let Keith tug the shampoo bottle from his hands and let Keith crowd him against the wall of the shower. Keith let Lance run his wet hands through the tangle of his hair and let Lance hide his snickers against his cheeks.

“The wall’s cold,” Lance said.

“It probably isn’t. You just have the water stupid hot.”

“I thought you could take it?”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Are you going to wash my hair?”

“Yes,” Keith said, in that firm and serious way he sometimes spoke that told Lance he was a step away from either laughing or pouncing. “In a minute.”

***

(They heard the door slam, a little later.

“You didn’t close the door,” Lance said, on the edge of a hysterical laugh or a sigh or both.

“Neither did you,” Keith grumbled and Lance felt that all the way up his spine, tingling over his neck and into his hair like stretching warmth.)

***

(“I like the way your shampoo smells.”

“I know. You sap.”

“I wanted to wake you up, before I left.”

“You should’ve.”

“You were sleeping well.”

“I wasn’t.”)

***

Hunk was in the kitchen devouring an omelet when Lance had the presence of mind to muster up an apology. Hunk held up his fork, stabbed twice at the air, and then shook his head and returned to his breakfast.

“Sorry Hunk,” Lance said. And then: “It’s Keith’s fault.”

Hunk sighed and muttered to his plate: “I cleaned the bathroom yesterday.”

***

They watched a movie with Hunk settled between Keith and Lance. And then they watched another. And another.

Summer days.

Keith migrated to the floor and Hunk put a pillow on his head and they watched one of the bad Godzillas and then a little Captain America (more like all three) and then Hunk complained that his neck and his butt hurt and they needed to do  _ something _ .

“No, we do not,” Keith said with a staccato rhythm making his voice sound vaguely sing-song. He flopped over on the floor, the pillow toppling off his head. “It’s relaxation time.”

Lance lounged back against the other side of the couch and poked his toes against Hunk’s side. Hunk swatted at his feet.

“Let’s go outside,” Hunk said to Keith. 

“No.”

“How are you so lazy? Aren’t you an athlete?”

Keith made a noise that was somewhere between drowsy and grumpy and Hunk sighed so huge it filled up the little living room, with all their books and photos and blankets and Hunk’s boxes, and Lance smiled. He pulled his legs back and hugged his knees to his chest, content to just listen for now.

“I need to rest,” Keith said, sounding squished with his face half-pressed against the floor. Hunk dropped another pillow on him. Keith ignored it. “Shiro and Adam are coming tomorrow and that’s going to be something, let me tell you.”

“Why are you like this?”

“Why do you two keep asking me that?”

“Because you’re confounding.”

Lance snorted. Keith tried to throw one of the pillows his way but got Hunk instead.

Hunk won, in the end, and he and Lance dragged Keith to his feet and Keith complained while he put on his shoes and complained while Lance locked the door and complained down the stairs until Hunk suggested they go for ice cream. Keith perked up at that, maybe even grew an inch, and Lance watched him hook his arm with Hunk’s and begin a rapid march down the sidewalk.

“This is supposed to be leisurely!” Hunk cried.

“Come on, Lance,” Keith called over his shoulder.

Summer, Lance was realizing, was one of the best times in this city, when the sun started to cool and a soft breeze started to pick up. The light carried on and on but there was something soothing about the way it grew more orange as the evening carried on, and the way dark blue started to seep out of the horizon—less to eat away at the sunlight and more to embrace the fiery continuity of the day. It made everything seem, simply, soft, like Lance could reach out at any moment and brush his fingers against the bark of the trees or the cooled pavement or Keith’s hand and he would feel nothing but warmth and light and the soft falling of summer.

It felt like home, he realized as he trailed after Hunk and Keith with his hands in his pockets and his tattoos blaring bright on his bare shoulders, creeping along his skin to dance against the back of his neck. Yes, home—he didn’t know what to do with that.

***

It was in little things.

Like the easy way Keith took his hand one moment and then could take Hunk’s the next—would they ask Lance to explain that?

Like the way he didn’t always sleep well—would Lance have to tell his mother, explain something he didn’t understand himself?

Like the comfort they had with each other, to the point that Keith could step, stark naked, into the shower and crowd close enough to make Lance bang his head back against the wall from the sheer surprise of it, the sheer pleasure of it, and then Keith could wash his hair and they could chat like there was nothing sexual about their bare skin—

Like the way he thought of Rachel’s wedding and looked at Keith and felt the flutter and furl of new butterflies, huge and daunting—would his family be able to hear that?

***

Adam and Shiro came early, of course. Hunk shrieked when he found Adam in the kitchen, eating what was left of their cereal and their milk, poking through their eggs.

Lance heard about this, later. He rolled over in the moment and went back to sleep, dozing back off to the sound of Keith tearing his way down the hall and then swearing at the top of his lungs. He heard later, too, that Shiro slept through most of these latest shenanigans as well, comfortable on their couch with all of their pillows.

“Oh,” Lance said when he got up and stumbled to the kitchen, scrubbing sleep from his eyes and leaning heavily against their table. Shiro yawned at him.

“You could’ve used the bed,” Keith grumbled, nose-deep in his coffee.

“Not all of us like to sleep in piles,” Shiro muttered.

Lance supposed that was fair. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he woke up with Shiro snoring next to him. Yell, probably.

Adam ate four of their remaining eggs and then promised to buy them all lunch.

“Are you packed?” Shiro said, and it wasn’t clear immediately who he was talking to.

So Keith answered for all three of them: “No.”

It was barely nine o’clock and Lance hadn’t even had a chance to brush his teeth yet. He thought mournfully of their bed, with its warm sheets and the scuffling sound of Red in her home and eating her snacks.

Hunk twitched his way through the day, fluttering his way through first impressions and hanging back from the conversation until Keith dragged him their way. Adam seemed to thrive on his anxieties. Keith played interference. Shiro sighed a lot. Lance was a poor distraction.

But they all survived. They packed up Red and said their cooing goodbyes and Keith solemnly handed Shiro and Adam the Red-Care-Package he and Hunk had made while Lance tearfully watched (fresh shavings and some hard-boiled egg, crumbled just for her, and a picture of the three of them waving at her).

“We’ll take good care of her,” Adam promised.

“You better,” Keith said.

And then to Lance, Shiro asked: “We’ll see you in a couple of weeks?”

“Yes,” Lance said, his cheeks stretching with the weight of his smile.

Shiro smiled back and then they were gone, driving away in the orange evening light and taking Lance’s hamster with them.

“I’m going to miss her,” he sighed.

Keith rubbed his back.

“I survived that,” Hunk muttered, sounding surprised, and led the way back up to the apartment.

“You did great,” Keith said to this back. “Adam and Shiro love you.”

“I might throw up.”

“You won’t.”

They started packing.

***

Keith agonized over his three dress shirts for almost an hour, laying them out on the bed and all but falling to his knees while he considered them. “Blue?” he said. “Red? Purple?” And then: “Why don’t I just have  _ white _ ?”

“I’ll buy you a white dress shirt,” Lance said. “Just make a decision. Please.”

“I can’t!”

Hunk refused to get involved.

“Do I need a tie?” Keith said, half-panicked, three hours after they’d finally gone to bed.

“Oh my god,” Hunk said.

They covered Keith in blankets and pillows.

***

Keith was sweet like that, sometimes: agonizing over dress shirts, making up a colourful list of Lance’s family members, making sure they took a photo just for Red so she wouldn’t forget them. These were some of the things that Lance kept tucked at the back of his mind, like a bouquet of precious memories or the logic behind the burst of warmth in his chest when he spent long enough just studying Keith’s nose or listening to his voice. These were the things he wished he could pluck from his brain and present in an array to his family.

He could trust Keith, though. He could trust Keith to put his best face forward and to be his most honest self and to put on display all the things that made him the human that Lance wanted to—

Well, that made him spectacular and special in Lance’s eyes.

***

Their flight was at ten.

It felt early.

Keith drank two cups of coffee and then the three of them dragged their bags out into the hall. Keith whirled around to do one last check of the apartment: lights off, stove off, cupboards closed, things unplugged. Lance watched him go, for a moment, and then puttered after him so they could check the bedroom, at least, together. Lance wasn’t as focused: he dragged his fingers against the plaster-esque paint of their walls, touched the closed window delicately, sighed sadly at the empty spot where Red usually was. He sat on their tidied bed and wiggled his toes against their carpet and he surveyed what he could of their home.

Keith, finally satisfied, came to stand in front of Lance with his hands on his hips and something partway between a smile and a frown on his lips. They studied each other for a moment and then Keith held out a hand and said: “Ready?”

“Ready,” Lance said, and found that he was, and he took Keith’s hand and off they went.

Two buses, an hour, and a lot of complaining later, they arrived at the airport and sent their bags away and Lance clutched his boarding passes and smiled.

***

The day Lance had left for school, for the first time, everyone had come.

Everyone.

It had been awful. And wonderful. Lance had been hugged, and re-hugged, so many times he had almost been late for his first flight. The twins kept trying to sneak sweets into his backpack and his mother kissed his cheek so many times Lance’s own face had been wet from her tears. He hadn’t cried, not there. He had waved at them for as long as he could, shuffling through security, and he had grinned and he had bounced on his feet and he had made sure they could see how excited he was, how eager he was to embark on this newest adventure, on this first step to adulthood.

And then he had found his gate and sat at a bench and stretched out his legs and wished, for a time, that he and Hunk had flown out together; and he had wished, for a time, that he had let his father come with him.

He didn’t cry until he had boarded the plane and settled against the window. That had been his first real bout of homesickness.

***

Off they went.

It was barely an hour, just going south and on a mostly empty plane. Hunk sat across the aisle from them, pressed up against the window and marveling at the mountains below and the stretch of the prairies. Keith and Lance switched seats so Lance could have the window and no one seemed bothered. Keith leaned against his shoulder, over their shared armrest and close enough that his cheek could rub, sometimes, against the exposed juncture of Lance’s neck and shoulder. Lance caught Hunk watching them twice, over that barely-an-hour, and Hunk always smiled wide enough that Lance couldn’t miss it. The plane was chilly and Keith’s hand was warm and the sky was amazing.

When they landed they shuffled off the plane and shuffled some more to their next gate and stayed close together, an affectionate bundle of three. Keith bought an expensive coffee and peed twice and scowled when Hunk suggested he might be burning a hole in his stomach. They set up camp by the gate, in a corner with an outlet. Lance and Keith played chess on Lance’s phone while Hunk fed them bad moves and laughed whenever one of them listened to him. The little seating area filled, slowly, until it was crowded enough that Keith slid closer from his place on the floor and set his chin on Lance’s knee. Lance set aside his phone and their game and leaned forward to tug Keith’s hair free of its stubby ponytail, so he could brush his fingers through it and watch, thoughtfully, Keith frown but close his eyes like he was willing—for now—to suffer Lance’s affections.

Lance grinned. Keith leaned heavily against his leg in retaliation. Hunk pressed up against Lance’s side and took an idle photo of the gate and the boarding time.

“I can’t wait to be home,” Hunk muttered.

“Yeah,” Lance said.

Keith opened his eyes and blinked up at him.

Lance thought: home. He smiled. Keith closed his eyes again. 

They boarded and sat with Keith comfortably in the middle and Hunk leaning to look either way up and down the aisle and Lance crowded against the window. He had to lean forward to get a good look out at the tarmac and then the shrinking city and airport and the growing, impossible clouds. Keith touched his wrist, gentle and warm, and Lance glanced back at him with a smile. Keith smiled, too, and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, and then stopped and shook his head and pressed two of his fingers to Lance’s pulse. 

 

***

 

Home.

Home was family, and the warmth of his mother’s laughter and the sturdiness of his father’s hugs. 

Home was their bed, and their bedroom, in their little apartment, too. Home was waking slowly when Keith slipped from the bed and home was breakfast together and good morning and good night kisses. Home was summer evenings and winter mornings and the desperate ache to see Keith that sometimes struck in the middle of the day. 

 

***

 

Lance watched movies and Keith read his book and Hunk dozed through his motion sickness and then they were landing. Lance turned on his phone too early, maybe, and frowned at a dozen notifications from his sisters and his parents and his brothers. More pictures than he had the brain power to look at it, and one looming message from his mother: WHEN DO YOU LAND?

Lance squinted at his phone. Keith leaned against him and blinked. “What does that mean?”

“They might be coming to get us.”

“Who’s they?”

And if Lance didn’t know better he’d say there was a hint of panic in Keith’s voice.

“My mom and step-mom at least,” he replied, tapping out a quick response.

“At least.”

“At least,” Hunk agreed and patted Keith’s arm. 

“That’s fine,” Keith said. “That’s great. That’s very nice of them.”

“Don’t throw up,” Hunk said. 

“I’m not going to throw up!”

Hunk patted Keith’s knee again and Lance grabbed hold of his hand. 

“I’m fine! It’s fine!”

“Uh huh.”

 

***

 

mama: OK WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU

 

mama: I’LL STOP USING CAPS LOCK WHEN I DIE

 

mama: TELL KEITH THAT I AM A HUGGER

 

***

 

Isabel: don’t mind your mother.

 

***

 

“But why the caps lock,” Keith muttered while they waited to shuffle off the plane, while he squinted at Lance’s texts.

Lance shrugged. “She says she likes the way the letters look,” he said. “But I think she just likes to feel loud.”

Keith looked him. Lance shrugged again.

“Yes,” Hunk said, dragging Keith into the aisle. “That’s Lance’s mother. She’s very nice.”

“I’ve talked to her,” Keith grumbled. “I’ve heard her voice.”

“Come on, panic-Keith.”

“I’m not panicking!”

He was, just a little. Lance could see it in the twitch of his fingers and the way he chewed his lips and kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure Lance was close. It was in the way he tugged at Hunk’s sleeve and stared up at the signs in the terminal when they were finally free of the stuffy plane, and it was in the way his palm felt kind of clammy when Lance took his hand.

“My sweet, sweet mother,” Lance muttered by Keith’s ear. Keith swatted at him. Lance ignored him. “Of all the things that could possibly make you nervous—”

“It’s a normal thing to be nervous about!”

“Don’t taunt him,” Hunk said. “He’ll go on about his dress shirts again.”

“Your dress shirts are wonderful,” Lance said quickly before Keith started to spiral.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Keith grumbled. “I’m doing my best.”

He always did.

“I’m not laughing,” Lance promised and squeezed Keith’s hand, once and tight. All the mirth was gone from his voice, now, and had seeped from his bones and in its wake was that bubbly warm feeling that came when he least expected it: that bubbly warm feeling that seemed to chant Keith’s name and call out for Keith’s soul and—

other nonsense like that, the stuff that kept Lance upright most days and drove him, sometimes, to taste the dip of Keith’s collarbone.

And what to do with it? With the way Keith breathed in and out, in and out, as they made their slow way to baggage claim? With the too-serious way Keith had contemplated his dress shirts, his shoes, the need for a tie? With the way Keith woke him, sometimes, with a smile and a touch to his cheek and a soft  _ good morning, sweetheart _ ?

What to do?

“Are you okay?” Keith asked.

“Yes,” Lance replied, nodding his head vigorously. “I’m great.”

(What to do?)

Keith and Hunk wrestled the bags free at the carousel while Lance tried and failed to call his mother (“Reception is really bad!” he yelled; “What?” his mother yelled back; “Reception! Is bad!” he yelled). They figured it out eventually, after several quiet “goodness”es from Isabel in the background and one strained “oh my god” from Keith. Lance swatted Keith’s hands away until he surrendered their suitcase and Keith rubbed his palms against his shirt and Hunk kept him from trying (and failing) to fix his hair.

“Lance’s family is really nice,” Hunk kept telling him.

“I’m fine,” Keith kept insisting.

“Yes,” Lance told him. “You’re perfect.”

Keith looked at him and seemed to consider this: Lance thought he could see the slow shift of Keith’s thoughts behind his eyes, could maybe even see the way Keith straightened, a little, and finally smiled and said: “Okay.”

 

***

 

( _ “I’m nervous, too. I want them to like me, too _ .”

_ “That’s not what I said _ .”

_ “It’s okay. I’m quiet and moody and have bad hair—” _

_ “I like your hair.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ “I don’t want you to be nervous.” _ )

 

***

 

It was sunny when they joined the shuffling crowd outside the terminal, dragging their suitcases behind them and peering over the heads of a chattering group of fellow arrivals. They stuck close together, elbows knocking, and then Lance realized he didn’t know what his mother and step-mother were driving, and that he hadn’t seen them in ages, and that they were flying blind—and then there they were.

He saw Isabel first, her curly hair tied loosely back and her smile wide enough to show her teeth. She was wearing an unfamiliar pair of glasses that made her seem both older and younger than Lance had ever known her. She raised an arm when she saw him, her favourite bangles flashing in the sunlight.

Just in front of her was his mother, her hair cut short and her smile just as wide. She waved, too, and seemed to stand on her toes to reach beyond Isabel’s shoulder. 

“Come on,” Lance said and tugged Keith forward by the shirt, his other hand clutching their suitcase tightly. Hunk followed, bellowing a cheery hello that Lance’s mother returned.

And just like that, there they all were.

He let go of Keith and their suitcase and pulled his mother into a hug so tight she laughed, clinging to him and letting loose a litany of “hello”s and “you need a haircut”s and “I’ve missed you”s against his shoulder. She pulled herself free and pulled Hunk in for a hug that he returned with gusto and Isabel pulled Lance in for a greeting of her own: a squeeze with one arm and then pushing him back just enough that she could look at his face and smile at his smile.

And then Isabel was looking behind Lance and Lance swore he heard Keith’s spine straighten.

“Hello Keith,” Isabel said. “It’s wonderful to meet you.”

“Hello,” Keith said.

“Keith,” Lance’s mother said, or cheered, and grabbed him by the shoulders for a hug. “Finally! We meet in the flesh!”

“Goodness,” said Isabel.

“Don’t choke him,” said Lance.

 

***

 

Lance introduced his boyfriend to his mother and step-mother the summer that Rachel married. He was nineteen-years-old to Keith and Hunk’s twenty. He would remember the sun and the noise at the terminal, and the way his mother had ushered all of them to get moving so other cars in the queue could take their spot. He would remember settling between Hunk and Keith in the back seat and the dazzling jangle of Isabel’s favourite—her lucky—bangles as she drove. He would remember the growing confidence in Keith’s voice as they went and as he became more comfortable saying “Regina” and “Isabel.” Lance would remember Keith’s one nervous slip and his flush after the words “Dr. McClain” left his mouth, and the sound of everyone’s warm giggles and Keith’s helpless shrug.

He would remember. He would remember the day for many things.

 

***

 

What to do.

What to do?

 

***

 

“My brother’s getting married,” Keith said, and then paused. “Eventually.”

“Eventually?” Lance’s mother echoed with a laugh.

“I’m happy it’s happening at all.”

“Lance has told us a lot about Shiro.”

“He has?”

“And about you.”

“Well then.”

“Mom,” Lance grumbled.

“He hasn’t complained about your hair in...hm, a year and a half, maybe?”

“Oh my god,” Lance said.

“He likes my hair,” Keith sighed. “He just doesn’t like to say it.”

“Oh my god!”

Hunk, because he was Hunk, recorded more of this than he should have.

 

***

 

(There he was: Keith. Handsome and awkward and polite and smiling. Talking easily with Lance’s mother and step-mother. 

He’d make them fall in love with him, Lance was sure of it. He did that to people, made them wonder where their feet went and how their heart had leapt into their throat.

At least, he did that to Lance.)

 

***

 

Lance grew up in a noisy house on a quiet street, at least in part. His father hadn’t lived there in years but still called it home, still complained when flowers didn’t bloom or Marco didn’t ice the walk. 

Rachel and Nick had their own apartment and a creepy cat. Luis and Lisa had bought a house a year ago that they were starting to feel was their own. These days, Marco and Veronica bickered over who was really in charge of the house and kept things manageable and halfway decorated for when their mother and Isabel came home.

Because it was still home. The previous summer Lance had screamed when Marco and Veronica had said it was their house now, and he had screamed some more when Marco and Veronica had suggested he didn’t get a say in  _ things _ anymore because he lived “out on the prairies with the buffalo.”

“What buffalo!” Lance had shrieked while Marco had snickered.

 

***

 

Hunk grew up not so far away. They dropped him off first. Keith scrambled out to help him with his suitcase and ignored Hunk when he said he was perfectly fine all on his own, thank you very much. Lance leaned out the open door in Keith’s wake and watched them with a smile, Hunk batting away Keith’s only half-helpful hands.

“Just give me a hug,” Hunk said with a roll of his eyes.

“See you soon,” Keith said, sounding only half-pouty.

“Say hi to your parents for me!” Lance called.

Lance leaned back when Keith flopped back into the car but he didn’t move from the middle seat. Keith squirmed to buckle up and then lifted his head and they were almost nose-to-nose, blinking at each other.

“What?” Lance said.

“Huh?” Keith said.

Lance’s mother leaned back and peered around at them. She looked Lance up and down once, frowned, and asked: “Are you going to shift over?”

Lance slapped a hand to Keith’s knee. Keith sighed. “I’m happy right here,” Lance said.

His mother shook her head and turned away.

Keith squirmed an arm behind Lance and tugged him just that little bit closer. He settled his hand, heavy and steadying, on Lance’s hip and pressed his cheek to Lance’s shoulder. Lance squeezed his knee. Feeling huge and awkward in the middle of the backseat of a rental, with his mother and step-mother pulling Keith into easy conversation, Lance smiled. 

And they left Hunk’s spot empty and warm.

 

***

 

Rachel tore open the back door the moment Isabel parked. Lance barely had a moment to feel a little bit of warranted nostalgia, to even feel some of that latent homesickness start to ebb away, before Rachel had grabbed hold of Keith’s shirt and hauled him out of the car.

Isabel and Lance’s mother sighed together.

Keith made a grunting, squawking noise that was delightfully unfamiliar. Rachel slapped her hands to his shoulders, looked him up and down once, and then nodded.

“Keith,” she said.

“Uh,” Keith said.

She whirled away and leaned into the car. Lance smiled.

“Little brother,” Rachel said.

“I have a name.”

She reached for him and Lance scrambled back, shoving his way out the other side.

“You’re so annoying,” Rachel shrieked while they scowled at each other over the roof of the car. “Just let me hug you!”

“Man-handling people is  _ not _ hugging!”

“Just get over here, you booger!”

Lance heard Keith say “uh” one more time and then his mother was taking Keith by the arm and tugging him toward the front door. “Don’t mind them,” she said. “Siblings. You know how it is.”

“I don’t know if I do.”

Rachel slapped the roof of the car. “Look what you’ve done,” she said. “Now Keith thinks we’re weird.”

“We are weird,” Lance grumbles. “Is this going to be a thing? Is everyone just going to drag my boyfriend places?”

“I was trying to get him out of the way!”

Isabel pushed Lance between his shoulder blades, clucking her tongue behind him. “Go say hello to your sister,” she said. “She’s getting married, you know.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“I’m getting married!” Rachel crowed. “Come hug me! And then you can go rescue your poor Keith.”

His poor Keith. Lance rolled his eyes and came around the car with slow steps. Rachel met him part way, tossing her arms around his shoulders and dragging him down and in for a hug so tight he choked.

“Don’t break my neck!”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘cause you’re so tall.”

“‘cause I’m human!”

“Welcome home, Lance,” she said with a squeeze, quiet against his cheek.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

“Come on,” Isabel said gently and they pulled apart. “Let’s go rescue Keith.”

And he needed a little rescuing. Lance’s mother had pulled him into the house and deposited him on the couch in the living room. He already had a sweet in one hand and a deer-in-the-headlights look on face, with Lance’s mother on one side and Marco frowning at his face on the other.

Keith nibbled at his sweet.

“Stop staring at him,” Rachel snapped, striding into the living room to wave her hands at Marco.

“It’s fine,” Keith said.

“You’re very polite,” Lance’s mother told him, patting his knee.

Keith grimaced.

“Hello Lance,” Marco said, finally looking up. “I’ve met your boyfriend.”

“Harassing him doesn’t count as meeting him,” Lance grumbled.

“You could start with ‘hello.’”

“ _ You _ could start by giving him some space.”

“I’m fine,” Keith said. Lance’s mother patted his knee again.

Lance rolled his eyes and grabbed a fistful of Keith’s shirt and hauled him off the couch. Keith came with a willing stumble, cramming the rest of his snack in his mouth. Maybe so he’d have an excuse not to talk.  _ Likely _ so he’d have an excuse not to talk. 

“You’re not subtle,” Lance said, letting go.

Keith chewed.

With another roll of his eyes, Lance whirled back to the assembled members of his family and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Everyone,” he said, maybe louder than he should have. “This is Keith. Keith—everyone.”

Keith swallowed.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “We’ve met him.”

“ _ You _ dragged him out of the car!”

“He’s seen my face and I’ve seen his.”

“Do you want him to think we’re crazy?”

“Oh no! Let’s not embarrass Lance in front of his boyfriend!”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Keith piped up and was ignored.

“What’s he do?” Marco asked.

Lance squinted at him. “What’s he—do?”

“I’m a student,” Keith said. “Like Lance.”

“Yeah,” Marco continued. “What’s he  _ do _ ?”

“He makes me very happy,” Lance snapped.

“That’s nice,” Marco said drily. “What does your student-boyfriend  _ study _ ?”

“You could try asking Keith,” Lance’s mother said with a whack to Marco’s knee. She stood. “I think we have some lemonade in the fridge, Keith. Would you like some?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “I think he would.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Yeah.”

 

***

 

And that was how Keith met—half of Lance’s siblings.

More or less.

He very politely drank four glasses of lemonade while Lance’s mother and step-mother smiled at him, and he grew increasingly frustrated answering Marco’s indirect questions, and then hunched his shoulders a bit when Rachel crowded close at the kitchen table and began peppering him with questions (“What do you want to be when you grow up, Keith? Is there a reason you’re growing out your hair like that? Are you shy?”).

Lance knew—just  _ knew _ —that they were all doing this on purpose, in that unfortunate familial hazing ritual that involved thrusting as much weird in the faces of a newcomer as possible as—inoculation or whatever. Poor Keith was probably half-sugarlemonwater by the end of it and Lance wished over and over that he had thought to bring Hunk, who was used to everyone’s nonsense and who knew how to guide Keith through nonsense situations.

And then Marco slapped a hand to the table and said to Keith’s face: “What’re your intentions with my little brother?”

And everyone had been very quiet for a moment, and then the room erupted into a chorus of “Marco  _ shut up _ ” and Keith went very pink and that was when Lance decided it was time to get the suitcase from the car.

 

***

 

His bedroom was down the hall from the kitchen, dusty and untouched.

He slammed the door shut and wished he had thought, as a younger and less experienced Lance, to put a lock on his door. He huffed against it and then whirled around to look at Keith.

Keith had abandoned their suitcase in the middle of the little bedroom and was looking around like he had just walked into a museum, or a new library, or a large room with many windows and too much sunlight. The sort of place that grabbed Keith’s attention and made him stop and tap his chin and rock on his feet and consider his surroundings.

The familiar scrutiny made Lance blush, from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head.

“Stop that,” he said, or tried to say. It came out mostly as a panicked squeak.

Keith looked back at him. He crossed his arms. He shrugged. He smiled.

Lance hunched against the closed door.

“Why’re you nervous?” Keith said.

“Says the guy who was panicking in the airport.”

“I wasn’t panicking.”

“Liar!”

“I wasn’t.”

Lance frowned. Keith kept on smiling at him.

It was unnerving and Keith knew it. Just—knew it. He was in full Keith-mode now; proper Keith-level of weirdness and small smiles and that knowing tilt of his head; proper Keith-level of just looking and looking and looking right at Lance, looking in a way that made Lance sure he knew what Keith was thinking—

(They hadn’t been alone together in a while.

Not properly, anyways.

Showers, sometimes. Quiet, late night rendezvous in the living room while Hunk dozed in the bedroom. Mornings, or afternoons, when Keith would press his lips to Lance’s neck and hold him tight and say nothing at all.

Did they still know how? Would they still want this, them, crowded close? The familiarity of it? The normalcy of it? The comfort of it?

Maybe Lance hadn’t thought of it, yet: the changes, the shifts, the tilting and growing and evolving balances of their relationship and their developing trifecta. Maybe Keith would love him differently, just as he now loved Hunk differently. Maybe Lance loved him differently.

What to do? What to do? What to—?)

—“Lance,” Keith said.

Lance jerked against the door. “What?”

“Come here.”

“ _ You _ come  _ here _ .”

“Okay,” Keith said, because it was still so easy for him. He crossed back across Lance’s little bedroom in barely a full stride, bearing down on Lance so quickly and so warmly Lance thought he would melt back into the old wood of his old door. 

And then he really did melt and into Keith, with Keith’s fingers on his cheeks and Keith’s lips soft against his in a kiss that ushered away the anxious flush on Lance’s skin. His eyelids fluttered (his heart, maybe, fluttered) and his breath caught and then, just like that, he felt alright.

“I’m having some serious deja vu,” Lance muttered when Keith pulled back. He nudged his nose against Keith’s and smiled through the soothing waves of the kiss.

“Me too.” Keith hummed, his hands falling to Lance’s shoulders and then sliding down his arms to settle at his wrists. He held on gently, steadily Lance, and Lance wondered if Keith could feel the thrum of his blood under his skin and in his veins. 

He wondered if he could say  _ I think I’m alive for you _ but that seemed like much—too much, too loud, and what to do—

“Do you remember our room?” Keith mumbled, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Lance’s mouth.

“Our dorm?”

“Mhm.”

“Vividly.” Lance laughed and felt himself shake against the door. There it was again: a rush of  _ I have been here before _ and  _ I have missed something here, missed it with everything in me _ . 

“I’m remembering,” Keith said.

“Remembering what?”

“You, I guess. Our old door. The first time I kissed you.”

“That seems like a lot of stuff.”

“There’s a lot of stuff to remember.”

“Maybe,” Lance allowed. Somewhere along the way his voice had dropped into a whisper that danced over his lips, tickling and nervous and not quite his own. It was good enough, though. It was good enough for now. He knew it, deep in his bones, and he knew it as he said: “But there’s a lot of stuff here. Now. You and me, right now.”

“Yeah,” Keith breathed. Lance felt it.

Maybe he had a soul.

Maybe his tattoos were burning, and waiting to leap off his skin.

“I am feeling a lot of feelings,” he said before he could think better of it. He pushed back against the door, felt his hair rub against the wood. “And you—should—go to the other side of the room.”

Keith—damn him,  _ damn _ him and his kisses and his voice and the intoxicating familiarity of his skin—Keith laughed, quick and rumbly, and pulled away.

He left Lance cold, a little. But grounded. But sure.

Keith pushed a hand through his hair and stepped around their suitcase, back to surveying the room like nothing at all had happened. But Lance could see it, now, like he couldn’t see it then: the shake of his shoulders while he shivered the moment away, the twitch of his fingers like he wanted to come back to Lance and press his thumbs to Lance’s hips and kiss under Lance’s eyes and make the room smell like them, like nothing had ever been here but them.

But many things had.

Lance pushed away from the door. He swallowed.

Keith meandered his way to the old desk and dragged his fingers over the battered stickers Lance had stuck on its surface, year after year. Whales and dolphins and mechas and dogs and guinea pigs and one faded Sailor Mars because she had always been his favourite— Keith turned away, his hands falling from the back of Lance’s old desk chair and his head tilting as he studied Lance’s old, light curtains and the peeling posters on his walls (Spider-Man and Roger Federer from his tennis phase and prints of the moon and an anonymous sea that had seemed so incredible, so profound, when Lance had been twelve, had been fourteen). Keith nodded once, like he had discovered something important, and stepped across the still lush and familiar carpet and dropped onto Lance’s bed, dragging his palms over the unfamiliar sheets and then leaning back on his hands to look up at the ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark stars Lance had had stuck overhead since he was very young, with their would-be constellations that were so different than the stars he and Keith had on their own ceiling, looking down at them.

He looked alien in Lance’s childhood bedroom. He was a piece from Lance’s new life, from his bumbling steps into adulthood, and now here he was, looking out over all the evidence that Lance had lived a life without him, once.

It didn’t seem right.

But Keith, here and sitting on Lance’s old bed and looking around Lance’s old bedroom and then smiling right at Lance’s own warm, tired face—he was perfect, just like this.

The multiplicity of Keith.

Lance pushed away from the door and took stuttered, determined steps towards Keith and his waiting smile.

“So,” Keith said. “Your bedroom.”

“Yup.”

“And your family.”

Lance flinched. He shook his head and dropped onto the bed next to Keith, flopping back with a groan. Keith twisted to look down at him, his fingers tapping against the sheets.

“Yeah,” Lance sighed. “Some of them, anyways.” He paused. “Just so you know, we  _ are _ always like this.”

“I like your family.”

“You’d better.”

“I do,” Keith said, insistent and serious. “And I want them to like me too.”

Lance squirmed against the bed until he had a steady view of Keith, frowning now and leaning properly over Lance. “They will,” he said. And then: “They  _ do _ .”

“You’re a good boyfriend,” Keith said after a moment, serious and firm. “Do you know that?”

Lance blinked. He opened his mouth. He closed it.

“You are,” Keith said again. “I’m lucky to have you.”

“I’m lucky to have you,” Lance mumbled, reaching up to press a palm against Keith’s shoulder, just the feel the solid weight of him. He held on tight. “We’re lucky to have each other.”

“Yes,” Keith said. “And I’m not scared of your brothers.”

Lance’s mouth twitched. “Maybe you should be,” he teased.

“Hilarious.”

“I have  _ four _ older siblings, you know. And almost three moms. And a dad.” Lance hummed, wiggling his toes. “You should be very afraid. That’s how this works, you know.”

“ _ Hilarious _ ,” Keith repeated in a drawl. “I  _ love _ this joke.”

“You love me,” Lance said. It came out in a quiver, wavering in the air with an uncertainty he didn’t feel, more sharp-turn serious than he had meant. He glanced away and then made himself look back. “And I love you.”

“Yes,” Keith said after a moment. “Thank you for bringing me home with you, Lance.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“I mean it,” Keith insisted. Lance squeezed his shoulder, the fluttering returning to his chest and the corner of his eyes. “It means a lot to me.”

“I want forever,” Lance said and caught his breath. “Do you remember that?”

“Vividly,” Keith murmured and leaned down to kiss him, searing him against the bed he’d grown up with.

 

***

 

“Weird question,” Keith said, digging through Lance’s empty desk drawers with a dissatisfied pout. “But I’m going to ask it anyways.”

“Huh?” Lance said, looking up from their spread open suitcase.

They had already set one of their polaroids of Red by the window.

So she could see everything, of course.

Keith glanced back at him, drumming his fingers against Lance’s desk. “Did you lose your virginity in this room?”

Lance stared.

He gaped.

He shut his mouth with a click.

And then, fighting through the blush on his cheeks and through the shriek that was threatening to spill out of his mouth, he replied: “I didn’t  _ lose _ it, you weirdo!”

Keith shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me.” He paused. “Just curious.”

Too casually. Fake casually.

Keith was useless at casual. Too serious, with his dark hair and his extreme emotions and that social awkwardness that made it impossible for him to turn down  _ four lemonades _ .

Lance frowned. He rubbed at his cheeks, trying to quell the blush. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

He huffed a breath and then resumed digging through their suitcase, their folded clothes and their weirdly similar dress clothes. “Yes,” he said. “I had sex for the first time here.”

Keith didn’t reply immediately.

Lance glanced back up, clutching two pairs of his own socks and feeling foolish and regretful. “Keith?” he said slowly. “Are you going to freak out?”

Keith turned fully away from the desk and leaned back against it. He drummed his fingers again. And then he said: “No, I don’t think so.”

“It was before you.”

“I know.” Another drum of his fingers. “I’m not going to freak out.”

“Why did you ask?” Lance said, putting the socks down.

“I told you: I was curious.”

“Feeling masochistic, huh.”

“No,” Keith said sharply. He frowned. “I just—want to know you, Lance.”

“You do know me,” Lance said. “You know me better than anyone.”

“You’re a different you every day,” Keith replied with a shrug. He pushed away from the desk and came to sit cross-legged on the other side of the suitcase. “I get to know you every day. It’s one of the privileges of being your boyfriend.”

“Uh huh,” Lance said, leaning back on his hands. “It doesn’t freak you out. At all.”

“That was then,” Keith said instead of “no.” “This is now. And we choose each other every day that we’re together.”

“I guess we do,” Lance said.

 

***

 

He knew Lance better than anyone. He knew Lance better than anyone ever had.

And Lance—

He knew Keith. He knew Keith in the morning. He knew Keith in the middle of the night. He knew Keith when he was irritated or angry or uncertain. He knew Keith when he was excited and joyful and loving. He knew Keith before he brushed his teeth and he knew Keith when he didn’t have the strength of will to shower for three days in a row.

He knew Keith then, and he knew Keith now, and he wanted Keith to know every piece of him.

Every piece.

Every memory. Every daydream. Every embarrassing pimple and unfortunate childhood decisions. Every moment Lance had ever thought of kissing him, and just him.

And every piece to come.

 

***

 

But  _ what to do _ ?

He couldn’t put his finger on it. He couldn’t put the words to it. It was a bubbling frustration he wasn’t sure he’d ever have control over.

 

***

 

Veronica came home with burgers and hot dogs and, generally, too much food but so it went with a big family. Lance and Keith knew she had arrived because she burst through the door and yelled “ _ Where is he _ ?”

And then she burst through Lance’s bedroom door and said to Lance, instead of hello, “Introduce us.”

And then she dragged Keith into a hug and said: “Welcome to the family.”

And Keith said, very seriously: “Thank you.”

And Lance wondered if he was going to survive the fourteen days.

 

***

 

(“He makes me very happy,” Lance had snapped and Keith had looked at him so quickly he had felt something crackle and crumble in his neck.

And he had smiled, almost embarrassingly wide, and he had tried and failed to hide it. Lance hadn’t seen, not that time, but Keith had hoped he felt it all the same.)

 

***

 

They called Hunk before dinner. Keith updated him on—everything.

“That’s just how Marco is,” Hunk said. “I told him not to do that.”

“Why would he listen to you?” Lance grumbled.

“You can take him, Keith,” Hunk insisted. “Don’t let him bully you!”

“Am I really going to be bullied by Lance’s brothers?” Keith mumbled.

“Probably just the one.”

“Oh my god,” Lance groaned.


	2. Chapter 2

When Lance was six-years-old, his parents had sat the five of them in the living room and had told them, with meek smiles, that they were getting a divorce.

    Luis had taken it poorly. He had stormed from the room with nothing but a strangled groan deep in his throat, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Lance remembered saying: _Luis_? And then Luis was gone, disappeared out the front door and running down the street so quickly Lance had been able to hear his shoes slap against the pavement.

    Give him space, Marco had said, teetering on his gangly legs. It hadn’t mattered, at first, to Luis that mama and papa were happy apart, that they would still be a family, that less would change than it seemed—

    Two week after his dad had moved out, he remembered opening the door with Rachel and seeing Dr. McClain smiling at them. Her hands had twitched at her sides, her red nail polish flashing in the afternoon light.

    “Hi Dr. McClain,” Lance had said.

    “Hello Lance,” she had replied. “You should call me Isabel.”

    And Lance remembered smiling.

   

    ***

 

They washed the travel grime away and changed into fresh clothes. Alone in Lance’s room with the noise of his family down the hall and Keith pressing quick and affectionate kisses to his neck, Lance felt that they were both home, somehow. Perhaps this was where all his hearts were.

    He snorted.

    “What?” Keith said against his shoulder, his arms loose around Lance’s bare waist.

    “Nothing.”

    Lance tilted his head against Keith’s. He studied the shirts he’d laid out on the bed: short or long or no sleeve? let his siblings oggle his developing tattoos now or wait until the excited novelty of Keith’s arrival had worn off?

    “You have to wear a shirt,” Keith said.

    “You almost sound disappointed.”

    “I am a little.”

    “Horndog.”

    Keith kissed him one more time and finally pulled away, stretching his arms over his head with a grunt. Lance grabbed the long-sleeve and tugged it on, wavered, and then pushed the sleeves up to his elbows.

    “Compromise,” Keith observed.

    “Compromise,” Lance agreed. “Are you ready to face my crazy family again?”

    “Your family’s not crazy,” Keith said. “They’re just—like you.”

    “I don’t know how to take that.”

    Keith smiled. “You should by now.”

    And Lance didn’t know how to take that, either.

    They left Lance’s bedroom hand-in-hand.

    The backyard was small and a little overgrown. Lance had spent many nights here, raging at the sky about the discomfort of his growing body, and chasing their retriever around the yard until her eyesight had started to go and she had started to wobble and hobble instead of bound. The grass tickled at his ankles. Veronica and Marco were bickering over how to cook the hamburgers. Rachel had taken up her usual cross-legged position on the wobbly bench by the fence, covered in nonsensical carvings from all five of them. She was elbow-deep in a bag of chips already. Nick had arrived at some point and looked like he was dozing against her shoulder, blinking slowly at Marco and Veronica’s back and rubbing idly at one of Rachel’s knees. Behind Lance and Keith, Lance’s mother and step-mother were talking quickly in the kitchen. Something clattered. Keith rubbed his thumb over Lance’s knuckles.

    Home.

    Nick spotted them and perked up. He waved, then seemed to center himself and scrambled to his feet. Lance tugged Keith along to meet Nick halfway.

    Nick pulled him into a hug, squeezing tight and digging his pointy chin into Lance’s shoulder in the usual Nick-way. Lance beamed. Rachel smiled at them around a mouthful of chips.

    “Hi Nick,” Lance said.

    “Hi Lance.”

    When he stepped back, Nick clapped his hands to Lance’s shoulders once, and then twice, and then dropped his hands back to his sides. His fingers twitched. His smile was wide.

    “Hi Nick,” Lance said again, trying and failing to stifle some of his laughter. “Holding up okay?”

    Nick’s shoulders slumped and his smile turned sheepish. “Well, you know,” he said. “I’m in, like, a pre-wedding...brain melt.”

    “Oh yeah?”

    “My brain’s becoming a sandwich.”

    “He needs a nap!” Rachel called.

    “Maybe,” Nick admitted. His gaze shifted and he seemed to be studying something invisible over Lance’s shoulder. “Just a few more days.”

    Lance’s lips twitched. Next to him, Keith huffed a snort of a laugh. “It’ll be over soon,” Lance said.

    That made Nick jerk. He blinked. He blinked again, and then smiled. “Nah,” he said with a ragged wave of his arm. “It’s just beginning.”

    Rachel shook the bag of chips. “Don’t say embarrassing things to my brother!”

    “I’m not!”

    “You’re going to give him ideas!”

    “Anyways!” Lance prodded at Nick’s shoulder, pulling his attention back. At the bench, Rachel wobbled and then shoved a crumby handful of chips into her mouth. “You want to meet Keith, sandwich-brain?”

    “Hi,” Keith said. “I’m Keith.”

    “Yes,” Nick said solemnly, nodding. And then: “Yes! Yes. I know. Hello.”

    “Hi,” Keith said again.

    Nick flailed an arm, somewhere in between a swing of an embrace and a handshake, and then froze like a stalled doll. He grimaced. He glanced at Lance. “Does your boyfriend hug?”

    “No,” Keith said.

    “Ah,” Nick said and settled for clapping Keith awkwardly on the shoulder. “Not a hugger, huh? Neither was I. Give it a week.”

    “Uh—”

    “Wait, did you _not_ hug Regina?”

    “Mom is unstoppable,” Lance cut in. “Keith’ll shake your hand if you want.”

    “He’s coming to my wedding, right?” Nick said instead of replying properly.

    “That’s why I came,” Keith mumbled.

    “Oh no. No, no, no. You came to run the familial gauntlet.” Nick grinned. His wild hair flopped with the tilt of his head. “Don’t worry—it’s kind of fun.”

    “Of _course_ he’s coming to the wedding,” Lance said before Keith could respond to that.

    “He just wanted to say ‘my wedding,’” called Rachel.

    Ah, Lance thought.

    Nick shrugged sheepishly and then clapped Keith on the shoulder again. Keith jerked into Lance.

    “Anyways!” Nick waved his arms again. “Welcome to the family, Keith!”

    Lance’s cheeks began to heat. “Can everyone stop saying that!”

    “Why?” Keith said.

    Lance looked at him. Keith blinked back, frowning now.

    “Uh,” Lance said. “It’s weird?”

    “It is?”

    Nick looked between them then rocked back on his heels. “Welp,” he said. “I’m going to see if my spouse-to-be has saved me any chips.”

    “I haven’t!”

    He whirled around anyways and shuffled back through the grass to collapse onto the bench next to Rachel. Rachel, the liar, held the bag out for him and Nick grabbed a single chip and nibbled at it. Together, they smiled at Lance.

    Lance looked back at Keith, his flush growing and growing. “Uh,” he said again.

    Keith, frowning, tilted his head. “Why’s it weird?”

    “I don’t know,” Lance admitted.

    “It’s nice.”

    “It’s not...weirding you out?”

    “Is it supposed to?”

    “I don’t know.” Lance gnawed at his bottom lip. He glanced away to frown at the clear sky and then back. “Shiro and Adam don’t call me their—brother—or anything.”

    “Do you want them to?”

    “I don’t know!”

    Keith huffed out a long breath, like he was thinking carefully through something, and said: “I like it. It makes me happy.”

    “Oh.”

    “Mhm.”

    “It’s really not, like, freaking you out?”

    “I just said it make me happy!”

    “‘kay,” Lance said.

    “‘kay,” Keith agreed, a little more disgruntled.

    Lance smiled all the same.

    “That’s it?” Rachel called. She waved the chip bag like a signal, the crackling loud in the little yard.

    Lance ignored her. “Come on,” he muttered to Keith, turning and tugging him along towards the cooking burgers and hot dogs and the sound of Veronica and Marco’s continuing bickering. “Let’s see if any of the food’s salvageable.”

    “Question,” Keith muttered, coming up close to Lance’s shoulder. “Is Nick always like that?”

    “Always like what?”

    “Weird,” Keith clarified, serious and sharp.

    Lance snickered. “Yeah. That’s his charm.”

    “Is it.”

    “You’re weird too, waffle cone.”

    “Ugh, no. No, no, no— _no_.”

    “Hi Keith,” Veronica said over her shoulder. “Hi Lance.” She jabbed at a charred hamburger patty with a pair of tongs.

    “Are you arguing?” Marco said, frowning at them.

    “Does it look like we’re arguing?” Lance shook his head and finally released Keith’s hand to snatch the tongs from Veronica.

    “Yes,” Marco replied.

    “We’re not,” Keith said.

    “Uh huh.”

    “What’ve you done?” Lance grumbled, peeling the ruined patty from the grill.

    “It’s not me,” Veronica snapped. She jerked her elbow in Marco’s direction. “ _He’s_ the control freak.”

    “ _Sorry_ I was distracted by the meddling little sister.”

    “ _I’m_ in charge of food, you—”

    Isabel pushed open the back door, a sudden towering presence in the yard. “I smell burning,” she said when everyone turned to look at her.

    “Marco did it,” Veronica said. “He’s embarrassing us all in front of Keith.”

    “He isn’t,” Keith said.

    “You’re very polite, Keith,” Isabel said drily.

    Marco rolled his eyes.

    Lance tapped the tongs three times at him.

 

    ***

 

    Luis and Lisa arrived with the twins and a lot of fanfare, chips, and apples.

    “Apples?” Lance said to Lisa while Luis tried to hug the life out of him.

    “Nadia thought it was funny,” Lisa said.

    “To keep you away?”

    “To keep me away.”

    “Hilarious,” Lance choked out when Luis renewed his squeeze.

    “Pay attention to the hug,” Luis insisted.

    “Oh,” Keith said a moment later. “Because you’re a doctor.”

    Lisa smiled at him. Luis finally released Lance. Lisa touched his arm.

    “We’ll keep Keith,” she decided, and left to follow the twins into the yard.

    “Keep me where?” Keith muttered.

    “In the family,” Luis told him. “Welcome.”

    And then he pulled Keith in for a bone-crushing hug, ignoring Keith’s squawked protest.

    A fragment of something heavy lifted from Lance’s chest. He could feel his heart beating, steady and sure.

    They went back into the yard. Nadia and Sylvio tried to climb him and were—halfway successful. Keith snickered when they tumbled in a pile to the grass, Lance making an exaggerated “oof.”

    Nadia, perched on Lance’s back, looked up at Keith. “You’re tall,” she said.

    “I wasn’t always.”

    Nadia considered this. “Good for you,” she said eventually.

    And then she and Sylvio tugged at Lance’s shirt, squabbling over who would get to scrutinize his nebula first. Lance sighed and dug his chin into the ground, drumming his fingers against the grass.

    “Comfortable?” Keith said, smiling down at him.

    “Oh yeah. All set for a nap.”

    “He’s lying,” Nadia and Sylvio said together, poking at the top of Lance’s back until he squirmed and bucked them off.

    They scrambled away, shrieking with laughter.

    “Uncle Keith,” Sylvio said, wiping his grassy hands on his pants and ignoring Luis shouting for him to do _anything but that_. “Do you have any tattoos?”

    Lance sat up and grinned up at Keith, drumming his hands against his knees.

    Keith blinked several times. And then: “Uh, no.” There was a little pink to his cheeks, a combination of surprise and pleasure that Lance knew well. It would dust behind his ears and down his back and, eventually, blossom over his shoulders and neck.

    Another fragment fell away, crumbling into nothing and leaving Lance feeling warmer, looser.

    He held out a hand. “Help me up, Uncle Keith.”

    Keith’s blush darkened.

    Lance’s father and Kim arrived next, bearing a box of desserts from Kim’s favourite bakery and some jelly just for Keith. Lance’s father shook Keith’s hand three times—up and down and up and down and up and down and “call me Alex” and “I’ve heard so much about you” and “how’s the hamster”—and then pulled Keith in for a quick and warm hug. Lance heard Keith make another “oof” and when released, he stumbled back a step.

    Maybe the red was permanent, now.

    “And you,” Lance’s father said, turning with his hands on his hips. Lance grinned, a little sheepish under the parental scrutiny. “What have you done to your skin now?”

    “Hi dad,” Lance said, shaking his head.

    “Hi dad,” his father parrotted and pulled Lance in for a hug. Lance melted into it easily, sagging a little against his father and clutching the back of his t-shirt. Against his ear, his father said: “Welcome home. We missed you.”

    “Missed you too,” Lance mumbled, his heart fluttery and pleased in his chest.

    “Hello Keith,” Kim said in a rush, pulling a plastic jello cup from the box and holding it out. “This is for you.”

    “Oh,” Keith said.

    “It’s rainbow jelly. The green one’s the pandan layer. Do you know what that is?”

    “Yeah—yes. Yes, I do.”

    Lance pulled away from his father to watch Keith accept the layered, colourful cup. Keith blinked, his eyes huge, and held it delicately.

    “Good,” Kim said, beaming. “Lance said you might like it. There’s two coffee layers for you, though the second one—well, I tried a different instant coffee than I usually use because I wanted a different colour but it mostly came out...like that. Anyways, I’m not sure how _that_ one is going to taste but the rest are going to be delicious. Really, I should’ve known better than to add unnecessary food colouring—but is food colouring ever really necessary?”

    “I—I don’t know.”

    “Hm. Hunk would know. We’ll ask him when we see him.”

    “Oh. Yeah.”

    “And then coconut—”

    “He seems like a nice boy,” Lance’s father said in his ear while Kim carried on, talking more animatedly than Lance had, perhaps, ever seen her. Keith nodded, maybe more vigorously than necessary, still clutching the jelly cup like he was just waiting for the chance to shove the whole thing in his face.

    “He’s wonderful,” Lance replied, smiling wide enough to make his face feel huge and bright. His father squeezed his shoulder.

    And the last of the heavy, anxious casing in his chest fell away.

 

    ***

 

    Lance didn’t stop smiling.

    He watched Keith listen with all the attention he could muster while Veronica tried, valiantly, to explain her master’s project in mechanical engineering. He said twice: “Sorry. Hunk would know.” To which Veronica replied, twice: “Yes, well. I don’t know anything about Chaucer.” Cue laugh. Cue Keith: “Me neither.”

    He watched Keith tell Luis and Nick and Rachel about Shiro, and then Red, and the way the nervous, stiff shape of his shoulders settled and began to relax. He hunched less, like he was becoming sure that no one (well, almost no one) was going to leap out and attack him.

    He watched Keith sigh at Marco’s staring.

    Together, they helped the twins assemble their monstrous burgers. “ _No_ , Uncle Keith,” Sylvio sighed. “Lettuce and _then_ mayo.”

    “Shouldn’t the mayo go on the bread?” Keith muttered.

    “Only if you want to be disgusting.”

    Predictably, Sylvio spilled mayo all over his shirt and laughed about it. Keith looked pained but amused.

    And Lance loved him.

    So much.

    He loved the way he ate the jelly under Kim’s hopeful gaze, reassuring her every bite that he was very happy and it was very delicious. He loved the way he accepted more food than a human should eat, making Lance’s mother smile wide and declare him the favourite of her children. He loved the way Keith seemed flushed and embarrassed and happy with it all at once, and he loved the way Keith wiped a smear of relish from Lance’s own mouth. He loved the way Keith said “ugh” when Nick said “what’d I tell you about the hugging.”

    God, he loved him.

   

    ***

 

    What to do!

 

    ***

 

    “Lance,” Lisa whispered when the sky started to grow dark and the twins started to grow drowsy and long after Nick had passed out on the bench with bugs landing on his face and flitting away. She crooked her finger, beckoning Lance close to her and Luis, settled near the back door.

    Lance glanced at Keith, who was caught between Rachel and Veronica, sipping at a beer and refusing to take sides in an over excited debate on the merits of the Great Canadian Baking Show.

    Lance scurried to Luis and Lisa.

    They smiled at him.

    “What?” he said.

    They kept smiling.

    Lance shifted on his feet. “What?”

    “We’re going to tell you a secret,” Luis said eventually. “But don’t tell anyone.”

    “I know what a secret is, Luis.”

    “No, really. We’re going to wait until after the wedding.” Luis’s mouth twitched. “You know how mom gets. We don’t want to steal Rachel’s thunder.”

    Lance frowned. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Then why’re you telling me?”

    “You’re the favourite uncle,” Lisa sighed, looking up at Luis with a fond smile.

    “Well, yeah,” Lance agreed. And then stopped. “Wait, what?”

   

    ***

 

    “Bye Uncle Keith!” Sylvio yelled, dragging Keith down for a sweaty hug and a wet kiss to his cheek. “See you later!” He scrambled into the car, Nadia pulling him part of the way.

    They were the last to go, driving away with the streetlights bright and dim all at once around them. Lance licked his lips and could still taste the slightly-burnt hot dogs he’d eaten, stirring the new memories into a flurried dance behind his eyes. Next to him, Keith rubbed his cheek and tilted his head.

    “Ugh, finally,” Veronica sighed as Luis and Lisa and the twins turned the corner and out of sight. “Bedtime.”

    “Bedtime,” Isabel agreed. She nudged at Lance’s shoulder and he looked back at her. Her smile immediately sparked one of his own, warm and gentle. “You two must be exhausted.”

    “Maybe,” Lance allowed.

    “It’s just enough of a time difference to feel weird,” Keith said.

    Everyone said their goodnights. Veronica was the first one up the stairs, stretching and yawning and complaining about her back (“You’re so old,” Lance teased). Isabel followed, dragging Lance’s mother out of her goodnight hugs to Keith and Lance. Marco vanished into the living room to check on his violin’s humidifier.

    “Bedtime,” Lance said, unconsciously taking on the soft and scratched quality of his step-mother’s voice. He took Keith’s hand and tugged him gently down the hall.

    “Luis and Lisa told me a secret,” Lance said in the dark, their bare feet quiet on the floor.

    “Yeah?”

    He squeezed Keith’s hand. “Don’t tell, okay?”

    “You’re going to tell me?”

    “Duh.” Another squeeze. “They’re having another baby!” Lance’s glee erased any preamble he might have planned, the excitement bleeding through his whisper and down his arm and into his fingers, wrapped tight around Keith’s.

    “Oh,” Keith said. “ _Oh_. Wow.”

    “Yes!”

    They opened Lance’s bedroom door and Keith flicked on the light and then Lance’s excitement faded.

    “Why’s there a sleeping bag on the floor?” Keith said.

    Someone had set their suitcase aside and put a plushy, purple sleeping bag on the ground by the bed.

    They stared at it.

    “I have no idea,” Lance said eventually, even though he did.

    “They...know we sleep together, right?”

    “Pretty sure.”

    “Don’t mind the bag!” Marco called from the hall. Lance rolled his eyes so hard he thought they’d fall out. “That’s for me!”

    “Of course it is,” Lance grumbled. He pulled his hand from Keith’s and bent to begin scooping the sleeping bag into his arms.

    Marco arrived just in time for Lance to thrust the bundle at him. They glared at each other.

    “Goodnight,” Lance said and slammed the door.

    He stared at it.

    And then, for good measure, dragged the suitcase and his chair in front of it.

    “Uh,” Keith said.

    “He’s so annoying!”

    “Uh—”

    “ _Nobody_ was like this with Nick or Lisa, oh no. It’s just Marco and his weird little brother complex.”

    “Lance,” Keith said, touching his elbow. Lance whirled to face him and scowled when he saw the twitching, laugh of a smile on Keith’s lips.

    “It’s not funny,” Lance insisted. “It’s weird.”

    “Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Keith nodded. “Super weird. But I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

    “Oh,” Lance said. And then: “Don’t let him in!”

    “I won’t let him in.”

    “I mean it!”

    “I won’t let him in, Lance.”

   

    ***

 

    Veronica eventually came down to tell Marco to stop being a freak and go the hell to bed.

    The grump always came out of her when she was tired.

    “Someone should keep an eye on them!” Marco yelled up the stairs. Lance leaned into the hall to scowl at him.

    “Why!” Veronica snapped back.

    “Go to bed!” Isabel boomed.

    Everyone scurried away. Keith came back to the bedroom, with brushed teeth and messy hair and already rumpled sleep clothes, and said: “What the hell was that?”

    “My step-mom,” Lance replied.

    “Right.”

    “Shiro doesn’t have a parent boom?”

    “What? No.”

    “Adam?”

    “No.”

    “Huh.”

 

    ***

 

    When Lance was ten-years-old and testing Veronica’s favourite black nail polish on his toes, he had said: “Isabel?”

    “Yes?” she had replied sweetly from her spot across the room, also on the floor with her journals spread around her. Lance remembered the glossy covers of each vividly: the words he hadn’t understood and the colourful images screaming from the floor.

    “Should I call you mom?”

    Isabel had looked up. Lance had smeared some black on his big toe.

    “You can call me whatever you like, Lance,” she had said eventually. “Within reason, of course.”

    Lance had frowned and lifted his head and looked back at her.

    “You’re still my son even if you don’t call me mom,” Isabel had clarified then, serious and kind.

    And Veronica had come into the living room shrieking blue murder about her black nail polish.

 

    ***

 

    Lance came back from his own nostalgia-infused trip to the bathroom feeling fresh and comfortable in his sleep clothes. He could even imagine that his shirt smelled like their bedroom, their bed: comforting, familiar. The bathroom down the hall overflowed with different memories: panicking over pimples, and trying to fix his hair before his first date with Alicia, and experimenting with makeup with Rachel when they were younger.

    Keith was lying on his belly on the bed, a book propped open on the pillow and his ankles crossed while he read. He was squinting a little, like he had a headache or—

    “You need glasses,” Lance decided, shutting the door behind him.

    Keith looked up and there was that wonderful sense of something new, again: Keith, familiar in his favourite sleep shirt and his hands holding his book open, lying on Lance’s old bed in his old bedroom with his old stars on the ceiling.

    “No,” Keith said and went back to reading.

    “I’m serious!”

    “Leave me alone.”

    “Uh huh. We’re going to test your face tomorrow.”

    “My face.”

    “Yeah! Your face. My mom’ll help. She likes stuff like that.”

    “Stuff like that.”

    Lance dumped his clothes on top of their suitcase. “Are we doing that—echoey thing again?”

    “That _echoey_ thing.”

    “This is plagiarism.”

    Keith hummed and flipped his page.

    Lance prodded at his side until he shifted over, making room for Lance to flop down next to him. “Were you reading while I was talking to you?” he said, affronted.

    “Yup.”

    “You’re rude,” Lance sighed, nudging his nose to Keith’s shoulder. “I’m going to have to tell my mother that the boy she likes so much is actually a humongous jerk.”

    “Am I?”

    “That’s what I said.”

    Keith hummed again and flipped another page.

    Lance was pretty sure he was being taunted. He nudged at Keith’s shoulder again and threw an arm over him. “Keith,” he said.

    “Lance.”

    “Stop ignoring me.”

    “I’m reading.”

    “Your book looks boring,” Lance said, even though it didn’t. The dust jacket was red and glossy and Keith had muttered about Mars when he had bought it.

    “It kind of is,” Keith admitted and flipped the book shut with a soft _fwip_ of the pages. He pecked a kiss to Lance’s forehead. Lance hid his smile in Keith’s shoulder. “You’re probably more interesting.”

    “Probably, he says,” Lance said, trying to grumble but his smile made his voice light and pleased.

    “Definitely,” Keith allowed, kissing Lance again. Lance gripped his shirt, willing his eyes to stay open through his joy, that sincere pleasure that grew and grew and waved itself into a warm blush on his skin. “You’re the most interesting thing in the world.”

    “I’m not a thing.”

    “You’re everything to me.”

    “Keith,” Lance said, but it came out vaguely whiney and the flush erupted like fireworks (like stars) over his cheeks and down his neck and against his palms.

    “What?” Keith said softly, shifting so he could fall back against the bed and drag Lance with him. He pulled Lance down for a kiss, sweet and warm and brief and making Lance’s fingers and toes and nose tingle.

    “Nothing,” Lance mumbled, smiling and smiling and smiling. He would float away if Keith let go, bounce against the ceiling and feel his heart expand and his lungs fail and all so he could keep looking down and seeing Keith looking back.

    To be seen, Lance thought. To be—seen.

    “Are you okay?” Keith said, his fingers gentle at Lance’s jaw, and then over Lance’s freckles and spreading warmth as they went. “You seem strange.”

    “I do?”

    “No,” Keith corrected. “No, that’s not the right word.” He made a disgruntled noise and his hand fell away, uselessly settling against his chest while he thought and while Lance watched his mind whirl away behind his eyes.

    Lance licked his lips. He renewed his grip on Keith’s shirt with one hand, the ghost of Keith’s warmth teasing him through the fabric, and pressed his other, clenched fist to Keith’s shoulder in a useless, desperate touch. Zero to a hundred, Lance thought with something of a hysterical giggle bouncing around his brain.

    “Keith,” he said again.

    Keith looked at him, his renewed focus making his eyes seem dark and sharp. What did he see, Lance wondered. What did Keith see, looking up at Lance and with, maybe, the lingering of a soft kiss on his lips?

    “Thank you for bringing me,” Keith said finally, serious and firm. Sometimes he gave his voice a weight that Lance felt in his bones, a reverberation and an extension of Keith’s words and his breath.

    “You brought yourself,” Lance mumbled.

    “I mean it,” Keith continued. “It’s wonderful. Being here, I mean, and meeting your family.”

    “And having the twins climb all over you?”

    “Yes,” Keith insisted.

    “Oh,” Lance breathed. His growing smile seemed to split him wide open, leaving nothing but space for Keith to climb into.

    “I’m not going to run away, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Keith said after a moment, his gentle touches to Lance’s cheeks returning.

    “I don’t know if I’m worried about anything,” Lance said.

    “I love your freckles,” Keith muttered.

    “I love you.”

    “I love you, too.”

    “I’m going to climb on top of you,” Lance decided, releasing his hold on Keith’s shirt to swat at the bed for emphasis.

    Keith laughed, short and stifled but wonderful all the same. Yes, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Keith, with his laughter and his eyes and his hands—wonderful.

    “It’s not much of a climb.”

    “Oh, shush.”

 

    ***

 

    (What to do with this, all of it? Every frenzied, wide-eyed moment of it—every soothing, gentle wave of it. Yes, what to do?)

    “A boy in my bedroom,” Lance sighed. “How _scandalous_.”

    “Oh my god,” Keith grumbled against his neck, his hands hot on Lance’s skin.

    “What will my mother say?”

    “Oh my _god_.”

    (What to do?

    It had seemed simple—no, it had never been simple; each step had been won and each kiss had been earned. It was natural in hindsight, always in hindsight, but Lance was tired of looking back, tired of waiting for his brain to catch up with his heart. And he ached for forwards, he knew it; he felt it in the singing of his heart when he woke with Keith’s voice gentle in his ears.)

    Keith flipped them—or tried to. They knocked into the wall, elbows and knees and Lance clapping a hand to his own mouth to stifle his laughter.

    “Christ,” Keith groused. “I remember why we have a big bed now.”

    “Our dorm days,” Lance said gleefully. “How did we ever manage?”

    “Luck,” Keith said.

    “Willpower,” Lance corrected.

    “What does that even—”

    Lance pulled him down for a kiss, sloppy and insistent so he could swallow the words and the memories piling up between them. _Do you remember_ , he wanted to say as Keith groaned. _Do you remember us, at the beginning_? But where was their beginning?

(A November kiss on their dorm room floor, and Lance dozing the peaceful day away on Keith’s lap?

The first time they had had each other, spontaneously and messily and new and embarrassing enough that Lance had run for days, had slept pressed against Hunk’s back and remembering and remembering, until Keith, all red-faced and earnest, had come to retrieve him? Keith, promising: _we’ll get it right_?

The first they _had_ gotten it right, well and truly and beautifully? The memory of the drapes and the springtime sounds and the way Keith had held him after; the promises made on his own bare bed with Keith so close and so beautiful?

Unpacking the last of their boxes, their apartment finally theirs? Keith dragging Lance to each room of their little home to kiss him and say _yes, here too_?

    What to do?)

    “Keith,” Lance sighed, holding tight, imagining that he could cocoon Keith inside him if he held on long enough. “I love you,” he whispered to every inch of Keith he could reach, his hands tangled in Keith’s hair and his body vibrating with need, or want, or both.

    Keith groaned against him, his hands ghosting over Lance’s ribs and his teeth grazing at Lance’s neck. “Lance,” he said, again and again. _Lance_.

    And Lance remembered, moment after moment after moment all bursting to new life under his skin. “Keep me here,” he said without knowing what he meant.

    “I won’t let go,” Keith promised.

    (What to do?)

 

    ***

 

    And then he knew.

 

    ***

 

    Lance woke abruptly, the darkness of his bedroom wall looming over him. His heart thudded in his chest, slowed, and then he could breathe again. He could feel Keith’s sleeping breaths against his neck, warm against a spot that was as much Keith’s as it was Lance’s. Lance pressed his face to the pillow, catching his own shuddering breath, and blinked the last of his startled awakening from his eyes.

    Keith was holding him close, firm enough that Lance was afraid to shift anymore than this. He seemed so peaceful, his arms heavy over Lance and his warmth so close to Lance’s back.

    But Lance felt sticky and hot and uncomfortable at the same time that he felt safe and calmed and rested.

    It was pitch black. The birds weren’t singing yet. Lance could taste Keith when he licked over his teeth, when he swallowed.

    Behind him, Keith sighed.

    If Lance twisted, he could look up and see his childhood stars looking down at them but even the thought made him suddenly, vibrantly homesick. He missed their own constellations already.

    Upstairs, his family was sleeping.

    That was giggle-worthy but Lance held it in.

    Could he turn and see Keith without waking him? He wanted to study his sleeping face, the soft part of his lips and the flutter of his eyes under his eyelids. Keith had beautiful features, each on their own and taken together to make the face Lance loved so much. Lance loved his eyelashes, and the shape of his nose, and the feel of his cheekbones under Lance’s fingers.

    “Keith,” he whispered to the wall, and then anxiety clenched around his stomach. He grimaced, wishing he could take it back.

    Keith didn’t stir. Lance relaxed.

    It didn’t last.

    Terrible, he told himself: it would be terrible to wake Keith up now, to risk it, just so he could stare at his face. What would he say? Keith, I just think you’re handsome? Keith, I woke up and wanted you? Keith, what do you see for us? Is it still forever?

    (Is it still—forever? Lance wanted to believe.

    Or maybe he already did.)

    Keith, Keith, Keith.

    He closed his eyes. He took a long breath. Then he twisted and squirmed and tried to shift over as quickly a she could, like speed would keep his restlessness from disturbing Keith.

    His heart resumed its hammering.

    _Stop_ , Lance screamed at it, clenching his teeth and holding his breath.

    Keith cracked open his eyes anyways, frowning as he woke slowly. “Lance?” he said, or slurred. “You woke up.”

    “No,” Lance said breathlessly. “You’re dreaming.”

    “Oh,” Keith said.

    “Me too, though,” Lance whispered while Keith let out a sleepy sigh and drifted back off, his arm tightening around Lance. “Keith, I dream about you a lot.”

    “Mm.”

    “I love you.”

    “‘ove you too.”

    Keith snored once.

    Lance hoped he really was dreaming about him, about them.

    Keith, you make me so happy. Keith, I want to be with your forever. Keith, you’re so sweet when you’re sleeping. Keith, you’re a dream to me. Keith, I want to marry you.

    Lance shuffled that little bit closer, counting Keith’s breaths, and touched his foreheads to Keith’s. Keith made a small noise, a sleepy whistle of his breathing, and Lance smiled.

    “Keith,” he whispered, and Keith slept on.

 

    ***

 

    Lance slept fitfully and then the midnight peace of his revelation faded into sudden, horrified anxiety.

    He climbed over Keith and fell to the floor when the birds started chirping and warmth started to bleed into the sky.

    “Lance?” Keith groaned, shoving his head under the pillow. “What’re you doing?”

    “Nothing! Go back to sleep!”

    “‘kay.”

    Lance hugged his knees and waited for Keith’s breathing to settle again. He chewed his lip. He counted to ten. He scrambled to the side of the bed and peered at Keith, studying the shape of his back and the way the blankets were tangled around his ankles.

    He had such nice skin.

    “Keith,” Lance said, testing the waters.

    Keith slept on.

    “Keith,” Lance said again, a little louder. “I’m going to bite your shoulders, okay?”

    Nothing.

    Lance scurried away and tugged his phone from its spot on his old desk, charging next to Keith’s. His dangling, hamster keychain (a gift from Hunk) dragged against the surface. He clambered to his feet and made for the door, and then froze.

    No, no. What if he woke someone else up? What if someone heard him?

    “God fucking _stupid_ goddammit—”

    He snapped his mouth shut and slid down with his back to the door. Clutching his phone, he stared across the room at Keith’s sleeping shape.

    He caught his breath.

    He closed his eyes.

    He opened them again.

    He unlocked his phone and sent a message to Hunk: are u awake???????

    He waited, but not very well. He followed this with a message to Keith: im looking at your butt while u are sleeping and u should know that u have an excellent behind. very stare-worthy.

    Keith’s phone buzzed on the desk. Hunk didn’t reply.

    Lance huffed, gave in to his impatience, and called Hunk.

    He fucked up the first time and called Keith and panicked his way to cancelling the call, and then tried again.

    No answer.

    Another try.

    No answer.

    Another message: WAKE UP!

    And then another call and Hunk finally answered, groggily greeting him with a: “Please, if you love me, _stop_.”

    “Emergency!” Lance hissed into the phone, not taking his eyes off Keith. “Keith’s sleeping!”

    “Well, _good_.”

    “I need to talk to you!”

    Hunk sighed so long it crackled through Lance’s phone. “ _Fine_. What’s up?” A pause. “Did you have a bad dream?”

    “No. It’s—” Lance broke off with a grunt. He clicked his teeth together.

    “Stop that.”

    “I can’t help it.”

    “I can _hear_ it Lance! That’s not good! That’s—that’s anxiety.” Another pause. “Also this, right here? This is also anxiety. Not sleeping. Panicked phone calls.”

    “I’m not panicked!”

    “You sound panicked.”

    “I’m not!”

    “Lance,” Hunk said, quick and sharp. “What’s wrong?”

    And that grounded Lance, so suddenly he felt sick. “Uh,” he managed after a moment. “I was thinking—”

    “Uh huh?”

    Something buzzed around Lance’s skull. It wasn’t quite a thought. It was—nothing, really.

    “Nothing,” he said, his shoulders slumping. Keith went on breathing, and breathing, and breathing. Lance smiled. “It’s okay. I’m fine. Thanks Hunk.”

    “Surprise, Lance, but I don’t believe you.”

    “No, really! I’m good! I’m great! I’m going to go—snuggle Keith.”

    Hunk sighed again. “I’m a little jealous.”

    “You should be,” Lance said. “Love you. Bye.”

    “I love you too.”

    Lance hugged his phone to his chest for a time after hanging up, listening to Keith breathe and imagine he could feel the shift of his bones as he slept. Then, with a long breath of his own, Lance stood and left his phone on his desk and made his way back to his old bed.

    “Keith,” he whispered, pulling the pillow away.

    “Uh huh,” Keith sighed and rolled over to make room for him.

    Sleepy Keith was so easy to snuggle up to.

    So was awake Keith, really, but—

    Lance fell into a peaceful doze, tucked against Keith and smiling still.

 

    ***

 

    It was late when they woke up properly, Keith dragging Lance from his sleep with kisses and soft whisperings of his name. Lance woke grinning and peaceful, dragging his hands over Keith’s shoulders and enjoying Keith’s attentions.

    “Time to get up,” Keith finally grunted and clambered out of the bed. “I need to go—woo your brother.”

    “I have two,” Lance said, rolling onto his other side and propping himself up on an elbow. “You’ll have to be specific.”

    “You know which one.”

    “He’s not woo-able.”

    “I’m not very good at wooing,” Keith sighed.

    “You wooed me just fine.”

    Keith glanced back at him. “I guess I did.”

    Lance grinned and flopped back on the bed, looking up at the dim stars on the ceiling. They looked plastic now; artificial.

    At the desk, Keith had picked up his phone. “Oh, geez, Lance.”

    Lance snickered.

    Keith came back to the bed, waving his phone and frowning down at Keith. “What were you doing up?”

    “I was awake,” Lance said, shrugging. “And then I went back to bed. Simple.”

    “Uh huh.” Keith waved his phone again. “Hunk says you had a freak out.”

    “Just a small one,” Lance lied.

    “You should’ve woken me up.”

    “I was too busy looking at your _excellent_ butt to think of that.”

   

    ***

 

    Lance went for his run, later than usual. He invited Keith and watched Keith struggle before finally making the very brave decision to remain in the house, all alone with Lance’s family.

    “Good luck,” Lance said, grinning and kissing Keith’s cheek.

    “I’ll be fine,” Keith muttered.

    “Uh huh.” Lance kissed the other cheek.

    He counted his breaths as he went on his old familiar route: down the road and beyond the old playground he had loved and well passed the elementary school he hadn’t attended and finally to the well-used bike path through the trees. It was getting hot already: the sun beat against his neck and his shoulders, blaring against his tattoos and spurring him on through his run.

    He couldn’t stop smiling.

    He kept losing count.

    _One, two, three, four_ — He could say it, just like that: Keith, I want to marry you. He could ask it, he could beg it: Keith, marry me, please; Keith, would you marry me, if I asked?

    _One, two, three, four_ — Hunk would laugh, throw his arms around Lance and lift him off his feet. _Look at that_ , he’d say. _A wedding!_

    _One, two, three, four_ — A wedding! A _wedding_! Their wedding—but maybe there’d be nothing at all, as far as weddings go. Lance, sliding a ring onto Keith’s finger and both of them signing a piece of paper—what did it even look like, the marriage—paper?

    _One, two, three, four_ —

    Lance came home, sweating and smiling and almost too euphoric, to find Keith helping Isabel with an early lunch. Lance’s mother was at the table, her glasses crooked and her hair messy and her fingers typing loudly at her laptop.

    “Welcome back,” Isabel said, waving to him from the stove.

    Keith twisted to look up from the vegetables he was washing. Lance grinned at him.

   

    ***

 

    Keith cornered Lance in the bedroom after his shower, pulling the towel from and tossing it behind them.

    “You look happy,” Keith mumbled at his throat, while Lance laughed and arched into his touch, his arms.

    “Stop!” Lance said instead of answering, pressing his smile into Keith’s hair. “I just got clean, you horndog!”

    Keith laughed, his arms tightening around Lance. “What does that even mean?”

    “It means you, you insatiable mullet.”

    “Goodness.”

    “I love you,” Lance said, catching Keith as he started to pull away.

    “I love you too.”

    Keith’s smile was so bright. Lance felt it to his core.

    And he felt safe, bare and laughing and loving in Keith’s hold and under his gaze.

 

    ***

 

    The euphoria carried him through the rest of the day.

    “Are you alright?” Veronica said when Lance whirled her into a hug.

    “I’m happy!” he crowed.

    “Yeah, yeah,” Veronica laughed, patting his arm.

    Later, they went to meet Lance’s father and Kim for dinner and Keith fretted about what shirt to wear until Veronica rolled her eyes and told him to just wear whatever he was comfortable in.

    “Comfort’s kind of the issue,” Lance mumbled to her.

    “Am I ever really comfortable?” Keith sighed as unconscious confirmation.

    “Great,” Veronica said. “You two are made for each other.”

    “Thank you!”

    Isabel and Lance’s mother saw them off, handing Keith the rental’s keys and Lance a handful of books to deliver to his father. Keith received several “good luck kisses” from them both and only blushed a little.

    Lance leaned back in the passenger side seat, bouncing one knee and clutching his phone and watching Keith as he drove: the shift of his wrists, the shape of his profile, the soft tilts of his head as he went.

    “What?” Keith said, halfway to the restaurant.

    “Nothing,” Lance said. “I just love you.”

    “I love you too.”

    “No, really,” Lance insisted. “I mean it.”

    “You always do.”

    Yes.

    Yes, that was true.

 

    ***

 

    The euphoria was something powerful.

    It could give him wings, if Lance let it.

 

    ***

 

    They came home late.

    Lance thought, again and again, that it was wonderful to be with Keith, like this. He liked the way Keith touched his knee while they ate dinner and chatted comfortably with Lance’s father and Kim. He liked the way Keith leaned so easily, so casually, into Lance when Lance slipped an arm around him. He liked watching Keith drive, the two of them alone with the whole world open for them.

    He could see them like this, forever. Wherever.

    He was still smiling when they kept through the house and back to Lance’s bedroom. He could still hear his father’s laughter in his ears. He could still see street lights flashing over Keith’s features as they drove.

    Keith led the way, already confident maneuvering through the dark and tugging Lance along behind him. Keith, Lance thought. And then more: Keith, Keith, Keith.

    But the moment the door closed behind them, the euphoria drained away and left exhaustion in its wake.

    “Lance?” Keith said, his own smile fading. “Are you okay?”

    “Yup,” Lance mumbled. “Sleepy.”

    He threw himself onto the bed with a groan, digging his face into the pillow and sighing once, twice, three times. Keith touched his back, his fingertips soothing against the bumps of Lance’s spine.

    “Sweetheart,” Keith whispered. “What’s wrong?”

    Sweetheart, Lance thought. He closed his eyes. Sweetheart: Keith was so careful with his words, so earnest with his endearments. What would it be like to be his husband?

    He rolled onto his back and Keith pulled his hand back. “I’m okay,” Lance said, pulling on the last dregs of his day-long smile. “I’m just—tired.”

    “Are you sure?”

    _Marry me_ , he wanted to say.

    “I want to be with you forever,” he said instead.

    “Yeah?”   

    “Yup.”

    “Me too,” Keith said and bent to press a warm kiss to Lance’s forehead. “Let’s go to sleep.”

    Lance knew that tone. He tossed his head back with a groan. “I’m fine! I told you.”

    “Yes,” Keith said. “You did.”

    They went to sleep, Keith wound tight around Lance. He fell asleep first, and Lance studied the wall with his fingers on one of Keith’s wrists and waited for his exhaustion to win.

    It did—

 

    ***

 

    Lance was nineteen-years-old.

 

    ***

 

    —and then it didn’t.

    He woke abruptly, again, jerking in Keith’s arms. Keith’s hold tightened. His breath was sharp and hot against Lance’s neck.

    “Lance?” he said sleepily.

    “Gonna get up,” Lance grunted.

    “You should sleep.”

    “I’ll be right back,” Lance said and squeezed one of Keith’s wrists. “I promise.”

    He slipped out of Keith’s embrace and from the bed and made his tip-toeing way down the hall.

    There was light in the kitchen. He paused, partway between the stairs and the closed door of his old bedroom, then hurried the rest of the way, his bare feet sticking and peeling from the cool floor.

    He hoped it was his mother. The hope was so loud it made him feel huge, like he was too big for these halls, for this house that was quickly become Marco’s and Veronica’s instead of—theirs.

    Isabel turned from the stove when he stopped and let out a breath.

    She looked so tall.

    “Lance,” she said softly and smiled. “I’m making hot chocolate. Would you like any?”

    It took a moment for the buzzing in his ears to settle. Then, he took three steps into the kitchen and dropped into a chair at the table. “It’s kind of hot for that,” he observed.

    Isabel shrugged and turned back to the point. She was already crumbling another puck, reaching with her other hand for the milk tucked to the side. “It’s never too hot for hot chocolate.”

    “I guess.”

    “Is that a yes?”

    “Yes, please.”

    Isabel hummed.

    Lance watched her in silence, leaning heavily on the table and studying the broad shape of her shoulders and the graying of her hair. Her skin had changed over the last few years, making her wrists seem small and thick all at once, and the birthmark on her right elbow growing darker and darker each year.

    Lance loved her, too. He felt it in his gut, near where his love for Keith had been roiling and boiling away all day.

    “Can’t sleep?” Isabel said without turning around.

    “Yeah.”

    Another hum. And then: “I got the feeling from Keith this morning that you aren’t sleeping well.”

    “I’m sleeping fine.”

    “Oh yeah?”

    Lance shifted in his chair. “Uh huh,” he mumbled to the table, suddenly eight-years-old again.

    “I see.”

    Isabel poured the hot chocolate out into two dark blue mugs, likely Marco’s, and slid one across the table to Lance. He latched onto it eagerly, pressing his palms against the heat of the ceramic. She sat slowly across from him, settling back in her chair with a sigh.

    “Why’re you up?” Lance asked.

    “Can’t sleep,” Isabel replied with a quirk of her lips.

    Lance considered this. He frowned down at his mug again, rubbing his fingers against it. It was almost too hot to hold. “What do you mean you got a feeling from Keith?”

    “I think he’s worried about you.”

    “I’m great.”

    “Uh huh.”

    He rubbed his fingers harder against the mug. “His affer—his brother’s fiance, he—he thought I had trouble sleeping, too.”

    “Why did he think that?”

    Lance grimaced. “We met up in the kitchen in the middle of the night.”

    Isabel laughed. “How about that.”

    Lance took a long slurp of his hot chocolate and burned his tongue.

    “Lance,” Isabel said into the quiet. “What’s on your mind?”

    He looked at her and dragged his sore tongue against his teeth and thought of Keith, asleep, in his bedroom, in their bedroom, in their old dorm room. “Keith,” he admitted finally.

    “What about Keith?”

    “I thought—” He broke off with a sigh.

    “Go on.”

    “This morning I woke up and I had ideas,” Lance said, finally, pulling his hands away from his mug and pressing his palms to the table. It was new. Worn, already; unrecognizable. “And I felt really good all day and then I just got tired and now I’m awake.”

    Isabel digested this. “What kind of ideas?”

    “ _Good_ ideas.”

    “Which are?”

    Lance pressed his lips together. He huffed a breath out his nose. Then he raised his chin and looked his step-mother in the eye and said: “I want to marry him.”

    And there it was.

    Out in the open. Hovering for Isabel to see, for Lance to unravel and unwrap. It seemed so delicate, leaving his lips. Impossible, maybe.

    He looked away, studying the dark brown of his drink.

    “Yeah?” Isabel said eventually.

    “I think so.”

    “Are you scared?”

    “Huh?”

    When he looked at her again, Isabel was smiling. Her long fingers were poised over her mug, the painted red of her nails seeming bright in the lights and her wedding ring all but glowing. She waited, unmoving, unchanging.

    “I don’t know,” Lance said.

    “Do you want to talk to Keith about it?’

    “Oh, no. No way. Not a chance.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because—” He choked on his words. He cleared his throat. He looked at the ceiling. “You know.”

    “I don’t.”

    He counted his breaths. _One, two, three, four_ — “I don’t want him to run,” he said, sounding almost thoughtful, even to his own ears. “I don’t want to—freak him out.”

    Isabel nodded. She took a tentative sip of her hot chocolate. She put her mug back down with a light _thunk_.

    “Can I say something?” she said.

    Lance tilted his head. “Uh, yeah?”

    “I think,” Isabel said, slowly and averting her eyes. And then she stopped.

    Lance grimaced. “Are you going to tell me not to propose to my boyfriend?”

    “Yes,” Isabel said. “But in a minute.”

    “Wow.”

    “Yes, yes, I’m awful.” Isabel waved a hand, tapping the nails of her other hand against her mug. “Listen anyways.”

    “I always listen.”

    “Good.” Another tap of her fingers. “It’s okay if home changes for you. You know that home isn’t so much a place as a...concept.”

    Family, Lance thought, frowning at the table. Home is family.

    “And you don’t have to be scared,” Isabel continued, still speaking slowly like she was choosing her words as she went, her head bobbing as she spoke. “If that concept is changing.”

    Lance blinked. He raised his mug to take another sip and then thought better of it. “Okay,” he said finally. “My concept of Keith is changing? And that’s okay?”

    “Well, yeah,” Isabel said. “But you already know that, somewhere in your head. I meant—well, I suppose I meant us.”

    “I don’t get it.”

    “You’re growing up,” she said simply. “Home is different. Family is changing. It’s okay. It’s scary, but it’s okay.”

    “You think I’m freaking out because I’m growing up.”

    Isabel smiled. “Are you freaking out?”

    Lance huffed. He dragged his mug closer to him, relishing in the skid of the mug against the table. “This feels like a freak out.”

    “I think if you woke Keith up right now and asked him to marry you, he’d say yes.”

    _He’d say yes_. What a thought. It rippled like unsettled pond water under Lance’s skin, cooling and spreading and sure. He breathed it in. He breathed it out.

    “You think?” he said, a little breathlessly.

    “Yes, I do.”

    “He won’t run.”

    “No. Neither will you. Neither will we.” Isabel’s fingers stilled. “We’re not going to scare him off, Lance.”

    “I know.”

    “And he’s not going to scare us away, either.” Her hands twitched, and then settled, and Lance had the slow thought that she wanted to reach for him.

    But she leaned back in her seat and cradled her mug to her chest and she smiled at him. There was a table, and time, between them.

    “Thanks,” he said.

    “You’re welcome.” Isabel took a long sip of her hot chocolate, her shoulder relaxing. She let out a breath and shuffled back a little further, looking contented and pleased. “Here’s where I say: don’t propose to your boyfriend.”

    Lance snorted.

    “I mean it!”

    “You just said he’d say yes.”

    “I did. And now I’m saying: you’re nineteen-years-old.”

    “Oh, boo.”

    “Don’t ‘oh, boo’ me.”

    “Maybe I want a husband, huh?”

    “Maybe you do.” Isabel leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Do your research first.”

    “Do my _research_?”

    “Do your research!”

    “I don’t even know what that means.”

    “Meditate on it.”

   

    ***

 

    Isabel went to bed first, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head as she went and telling him: “You’re braver than you think.”

    “I love you,” Lance said as she pulled back.

    “I love you too.”

    He listened to the stairs creak under her as she went. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and spice and chocolate. The sink made a gurgling, welcoming sound at him.

    Everything was the same, and everything was different: the table, the mugs, the hot chocolate and Isabel’s comforting advice in the kitchen. He could walk up and down the halls and remember a thousand things. He could wake Keith and tell it all to him: here, a lost tooth; there, playing games with his sisters; this room, where his mother had introduced them all to Isabel; that room, where his parents had promised that less would change than they thought.

    Home had never meant one thing, for him. It didn’t shift. It expanded, it blossomed, it grew to encase his father, his mother, his siblings; his step-mother, Kim, Lisa, and Nick.

    Keith, and Red, and Hunk. Shiro and Adam and the friends Lance had made, way across the country.

    Keith.

    Lance swirled what was left of his hot chocolate, watching the dark of it slide against the ceramic. _You’re braver than you think_ , Isabel had said—but maybe it wasn’t about bravery. Maybe he just needed to stand on his own feet.

    Whatever that meant.

    He got up and flicked off the lights of the kitchen and began creeping his way back to what had once been his bedroom, cradling the mostly-empty mug close as he went. Keith was snoring when Lance stepped back into the room. When his eyes adjusted, he could see Keith curled around the one pillow, the blankets tossed to the ground.

    Lance watched him for a moment. He perched at the end of the bed, counting seven of Keith’s snores, and then poked him in the side.

    Keith grunted.

    “Keith,” Lance said. “Wake up.”

    “No,” Keith groaned. Maybe growled.

    “I’m serious! Wake up.”

    “Lance. _Lance_.”

    “I have hot chocolate.”

    Keith sighed and rolled over to blink blearily up at Lance. “It’s too hot for hot chocolate.”

    “It’s never too hot for hot chocolate,” Lance replied. “Also, it’s cold now.”

    “It’s not _hot chocolate_ then, is it.”

    “Just sit up. I need to talk to you.”

    That woke Keith up, so quickly that Lance began to regret his words. Keith reached for him, his hands tangling in the front of Lance’s shirt.

    “What’s wrong?” he said. “Are you okay?”

    “Yeah. I think so. Just had a freakout.”

    “What?”

    “Just a little one.”

    “A little freakout.”

    “Uh huh.”

    “We,” Keith said thoughtfully. “Should stop calling it that.”

    “What is it then?”

    “I don’t know. Not a freakout.”

    “Whatever.” Lance set the mug on his old battered night table. It wobbled pathetically. “Keith.”

    “Hang on,” Keith mumbled, releasing Lance’s shirt and squirming to sit up. He managed it somehow, wobbling sleepily, dazedly, while Lance watched with a smile.

    “Ready?” Lance whispered.

    “Yup.”

    “You’re my family,” Lance said.

    And there wasn’t a hint of hesitation on him: not in his throat, not on his tongue, not in his fingers or the quiver of his toes. He was sure. Not with the draining, euphoric surety of the day, but with something smoother and more honest; warmer and at the same time more daring.

    He was sure.

    “Huh?” Keith said.

    “I said: you’re my family.”

    “Oh.”

    Lance smiled.

    In the dark, Keith reached for him, a hand at Lance’s cheek and then his shoulder and then falling to land warm and heavy at his waist. For a moment, all Lance could hear was their breathing, out of synch and steady. He missed Red. Her snuffles, her wheel, her wavering fur.

    “Did you hear me?” he said softly.

    “Yes.” Keith scooted closer, the sheets shifting underneath them and his breath warm on Lance’s lips when he nudged their noses together. It was soft, and clumsy, and affectionate, so Lance felt warmth and comfort spread and spread and grow and grow until he thought he was glowing with it.

    “Good,” he mumbled.

    “Good,” Keith agreed. “Lance—”

    “Yeah?”

    “You and me—we’re forever.”

    There was no forever to be had, Lance realized. Just made. Just lived.

    “Yeah,” he sighed and found Keith’s lips in the dark.

 

    ***

 

    No, there was no euphoria.

    He didn’t wake up beaming and excited and eager. He woke slowly, with Keith heavy on his arm and his own face pressed to Keith’s neck. It was too hot to be tangled together like this. Lance was sweaty and aching in the mounting summer heat, but like this—like this it was all worth it.

    He sighed into the morning and squirmed to sit up and found Keith was already looking up at him, one hand heavy and grounding on Lance’s wrist.

    They smiled.

    “You’re okay,” Keith said.

    “Yeah.”

    “Good.”

 

    ***

 

 And he had work to do.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dakfjaljdfsalsdkjaf i’m still not entirely happy but there’s only so many months of agonizing you can give something am i right

They spent the day at Lisa and Luis’s, wrestling and playing and admonishing the twins. It was a good day. Lisa marvelled at the vibrancy of Lance’s nebula, which was always satisfying, and the twins prodded at their part of the starry swirl on Lance’s back. Luis seemed happy to have the chance to talk about the baby, just casually mentioning it ( _ when the baby comes) _ and smiling at Lisa like she lit the sun.

“It wasn’t planned,” Lisa told Lance while the twins kicked Keith’s Kirby-loving ass at Smash Brothers. She shrugged. Lance smiled. And she added: “Not everything is.”

“Coffee cup wisdom from Lisa,” Lance teased.

She rolled her eyes and squeezed his hand and they shared an apple, talking quietly back and forth about nothing and everything: Nadia’s soccer team and Sylvio’s dance classes and Luis’s stalwart belief that they’d be successful if only they both learned to play the piano. Across the room, crowded on the couch with the twins, Keith bit down curses and small grunts of annoyance while Luis shouted bad advice at the back of his head and the twins took turns trying to wrestle the controller from him (“You suck, Uncle Keith!”).

“Keith’s going to meet Hunk’s parents tomorrow,” Lance said, waving the apple core like a pendulum until Lisa snatched it away from him. “I think he’s nervous.”

“He’s fine,” Lisa said.

Keith swore loudly at the television. The twins shrieked their offense. Luis laughed so hard he choked. And Lance looked up in time to watch Keith try to become one with the couch, his cheeks pink.

“Yeah,” Lance sighed. “He’s great.”

“I’m glad you brought him,” Lisa said, poking at one of Lance’s ankles with her socked feet.

“Me too.”

When it was time to go, with soft, summer light drifting around them and leading them into evening, the twins complained.

As they did.

“We could have a sleepover!” Sylvio insisted. “We’ve got lots of pillows.”

“Your daddy wants us to leave him alone,” Lance teased, pulling them both in for a hug that had them laughing against his shoulders and chest.

That got harder every year: fitting both of them close, in his arms and squirming through their delight. Lance remembered their little, wrinkled baby faces so clearly and how his own childish hands had seemed so huge next to them.

“He doesn’t,” Nadia said through her giggles. “He wants you to say. Just ask him.”

“I will not.”

Keith was smothered in more hugs and more kisses and another round of “Uncle Keith!” and then they were going.

“Do you want to drive?” Keith asked, jangling the keys.

“Nah. I like watching you.”

Keith grimaced.

It was true, though Lance had said it with a grin and a poorly exaggerated wink: the two days of borrowing Isabel and Lance’s mother’s rental had reintroduced him to this serene, focused Keith who thought Lance didn’t notice when he drove too fast. It wasn’t that Keith was all that different, driving, than how he seemed in their day to day. It was more like— It was more like Lance could lean back, his head lolling against the seat and his legs feeling too long, and watch Keith being as Keith as he ever was. Undiluted Keith. Keith, with his steady hands and who talked like he knew Lance was listening. Keith who would glance over when he could, just to share a smile, just to reach out and touch Lance’s knee.

What if they just kept going? On and on, just like this. 

“We have an anniversary coming up,” Lance said when they were almost home, the sky warm and cool all at once above them; the air in the car chilled and heavy.

“That’s months away.”

“It’s coming up! Sooner than you think, Keith.”

“Says the guy who  _ forgot _ .”

Lance flinched and squirmed back against the seat. He kicked out one leg uselessly. “Yeah! I forgot.” He paused. “Not this year, though.”

“It’s okay if you do,” Keith said.

“It is not!”

“It is,” he insisted. “Makes surprising you easier.”

“Maybe  _ I _ want to surprise  _ you _ this year.”

“Mhm.”

“I’m serious. You can have the year after!”

“We are not planning our surprises.”

“We just did. All the anniversary surprises for the rest of our lives.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lance turned away to hide his grin, leaning heavily against the door and watching familiar streets and homes and signs pass them by. “Keith,” he said after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“I know you wanted to, but I mean it: thank you for coming.”

Keith didn’t say anything at first, and then: “You’re welcome.”

And that was all. It made something in Lance sing and sing and sing, and he wanted to scream for Keith to pull over so they could scramble into the backseat and kiss until their faces melted together. 

“It means a lot to me when you spend time with my family,” Keith mumbled, like he almost didn’t want to say it.

But Lance heard it, and he kept it, and he smiled and smiled and smiled out the window. “I’m excited to meet the Holts,” he said.

“You are now.”

“And I will be later!”

Keith snorted. “Here’s hoping we both survive.”

“If we can survive my family, we can survive yours.”

And Lance knew they had both grown because Keith didn’t even try to qualify that: family, Lance heard him bounce around his head; family—yes, the Holts were his family.

Lance wished he could take a picture of the moment, the quiet of it all, just to share with Adam and Shiro and Hunk.

“I like the twins,” Keith said thoughtfully. “I like your brother and Lisa.”

“They’re very likable.”

“Spending time with them is nice.”

“Yeah. It is.”

 

***

 

Lance, sitting cross-legged on the little bed with all its memories, yawned and stretched his arms over his head with a grunt. Something in his left shoulder crackled and popped. He let his arms flop against his lap and watched Keith putter around the room.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” he asked, when the silence had stretched on and on just a little too far.

“Maybe,” Keith allowed. “You should come.”

“Oh no,” Lance said, shaking his head. “No way. I’ve already met Hunk’s parents.”

Keith huffed.

“I mean it! Hunk wants to introduce  _ you _ .”

“Oh boy.”

“Oh boy, indeed.”

Keith flicked off the light and Lance took that as his cue to squirm under the covers and close to the wall. Keith followed, sliding close and slipping a hand under the blankets and under Lance’s sleep shirt, feeling along Lance’s ribs.

“‘s weird that Federer is watching us all the time,” Keith muttered.

“I liked his hair,” Lance admitted.

Keith laughed.

“And his backhand, okay!”

“Ah yes, your great tennis obsession. How could I forget?”

“You didn’t know me then, Keith!”

“I know you now,” Keith mumbled, so close and so warm.

“Yeah,” Lance allowed.

 

***

 

He had comfortable dreams.

It wasn’t always images: sometimes it was just feelings, like the soft warmth of his chest when he woke up pressed against Keith, or sandwiched between Keith and Hunk. Sometimes it was clear, dreamy scenes, an intense remembering: Keith’s hands on his thighs and late afternoon sun in their old room; Red, flat and remarkably still on a plate; Hunk, dozing through a nasty cold with Keith watching over him.

It reminded him, a little, of the homesickness that had plagued him through those first few, tumultuous weeks of his first year.

 

***

 

Lance woke with one of Keith’s hands on his chest and Keith’s lips at his ear. He hummed and rolled into Keith’s hold, trying to worm his way into Keith’s chest and somewhere near his heart. He felt Keith laugh—but it wasn’t quite a laugh. It was something relieved, and like his voice when he whispered soft encouragement or told Red about his day. Lance clutched his shirt and swung a leg over him, hiding his smile.

“Sweetheart,” Keith mumbled, coaxing and gentle.

His sleep, peaceful and constant, was calling Lance back. He thought he’d melt into Keith and the mattress, feeling sweaty under the blankets but safe in his comfort.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Keith said, still soft, still like a voice out of Lance’s dreams. “Do you want to get up with me?”

“I want to stay in bed with you,” Lance sighed.

“Yeah,” Keith breathed and left it at that, with his fingers light in Lance’s hair and his heart beating steadily under Lance’s touch.

He pulled away eventually, making apologetic noises and leaving Lance to bury himself against the warm spot Keith left. Lance was asleep again, like leaping into a pool with nothing but light and the muted roar of the water in his ears. He didn’t dream. He rested. He didn’t wake again until Keith touched his shoulder, drawing Lance back to see his smile and the wet sheen of his hair.

“Are you leaving?” Lance said in a sleepy slur. He rolled back against the pillow, drawing the blankets higher around him even though it was already warm, almost hot, in his old bedroom.

“Yeah,” Keith said, his hand still heavy on Lance’s shoulder. 

“Okay.” Lance squirmed back and then felt the little tension in his body melt away in a cheery puff of sleepiness. “I might...go back to sleep.”

“Good,” Keith said. He bent to kiss Lance’s smile and left it wider and growing. “You look like you’re sleeping well.”

“I am.”

“Good,” Keith said again. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll miss you.”

***

 

When Lance finally dragged himself to a sagging sitting position, it was late into the morning and Keith was long gone. He slumped against the wall, huffed and allowed himself a brief pout, and then threw himself out of the bed.

He missed Keith almost immediately, but that was just the way things went so he rolled with it, acknowledging the impatient roiling in his belly and promising it that Keith would be back, soon; he’d have Keith again, soon. He stretched, flopped back onto the bed, and then got back up and stretched again with a determined grunt.

He felt well-rested. He felt like he really had slept well, uninterrupted and comfortable. It made the whole room seem a little clearer and Lance wondered, briefly, if this was how all his days could be (all his mornings could be) if he could just—sleep—normally.

He had a good morning message from Keith waiting on his phone:  _ you look peaceful _ , it read;  _ I love you, i can’t wait to see you _ .

He had dozens of photos from Hunk, already, of him and of Keith and of him and Keith and the sunshine that was waiting for Lance outside. He saved each photo and went to take a shower.

“Someone’s finally awake,” Marco called down the hall. Lance ignored him.

He felt loose and relaxed and awake as he went about his (late) morning, even though he had skipped his run. When he rolled his shoulders, he felt almost no tension. When he remembered that he wouldn’t be seeing Keith for hours, or Hunk for at least another day, he was able to quell the little stir of anxiety in his stomach. While he brushed his teeth and washed his face, he could look up at the mirror and recognize his own face as familiar and happy and awake.

It was a good day for him, already. He wanted to embrace it. He hummed as he went back down the hall feeling clean and refreshed and soft.

When he came into his old bedroom, which was already full of new memories of Keith and a renewed feeling of home, he found Rachel sitting cross-legged on his bed, flipping through Keith’s novel.

“Funny,” she said by way of greeting, pointing twice at the opening pages. “I didn’t take Keith for a, uh, Mars guy.”

“Go away,” Lance said.

“I’m serious! He looks all suave and brooding—eh, maybe not suave but brooding is definitely on the list.”

“He doesn’t brood,” Lance snapped back, tossing his bundle of sleep clothes on the desk. “Not all the time.”

“What does he brood about?”

“Life,” Lance deadpanned. “What’re you doing here?”

Rachel frowned and flipped the book shut. She leaned back on her hands. “Keith’s busy, right?”

“He’s meeting Hunk’s parents.”

“You didn’t go with him?”

“Not this time.”

Rachel hummed.

Lance crossed his arms, feeling suddenly bare in his towel and with his sister sitting on his bed. “Can you go away while I get dressed?”

“Sure,” Rachel said absently, gazing up at Lance’s stars and then jerking her attention back to him. “Can I see your tattoos?”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m not kidding!”

“Go away!”

“Okay, okay,” she said, sliding off the bed. “I was thinking that we could...spend the day together.”

Lance squinted at her. “Uh, sure?”

Rachel brightened, smiling so wide it was startling. “Great! Okay! I’ll wait in the kitchen.” She hurried to the door and then stopped, turning back to snap: “Hurry up.”

Lance rolled his eyes.

He did not hurry.

He checked his phone to see if he had any new messages or photos, made the bed, and dressed like he was getting ready for say, a wedding rather than just pulling on his favourite sleeveless hoodie with its big pocket and soft hood. He checked over the room one more time.

Rachel was waiting for him in the kitchen, hunched a huge glass of orange juice and scowling at him.

Lance smiled.

“What were you even doing?”

“Getting ready to face the day,” Lance replied lightly, taking a seat across from her. “What have  _ you _ been doing?”

“Waiting for you!” She grumbled nonsense into her glass and then chugged back half of it.

Lance stretched across the table when she put the glass back down and he stole the rest of it, sipping more sedately.

“I was thinking,” Rachel said, licking her lips. “We could go for lunch—my treat for my starving student of a little brother—and then, I don’t know, wander around downtown and see what’s happening.”

“Sure,” Lance said. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we have to see.”

Lance finished the orange juice and let his sister drag him outside and to her and Nick’s rumbly little car. Upstairs, Marco was practicing something Lance could barely hear: just the lilting sounds of his violin from far away.

Like a memory.

 

***

 

Lance kept his eyes trained out the window, watching the city go by and listening to Rachel’s grumbling and how she ignored him when he said again and again that they should’ve taken transit.

They talked, a little: where do you want to eat? oh, wherever you want. I don’t know what I want. nervous about the wedding? maybe a little.

They talked, a little, about nothing at all and spent most of the drive in what passed for silence between them. It had been a while since he had last been alone with Rachel, and he remembered it clearly.

A day like this, an adventure like this.

He wondered, several times, what Keith would say. He wondered if Keith ever had moments like this, with Shiro: sitting and waiting to think of something to say and finding that it was hard to remember how to carry a conversation.

They parked, eventually, and paid too much for it and complained amicably about downtown rates, and then they wandered. They hovered outside one restaurant, and then another, and listened to a busker on his saxophone. Morning was long gone when they finally gave up on making a proper decision and grabbed hot dogs from a stand and settled on a bench in one of the little, downtown green spaces that more or less passed for a park.

Halfway through her hot dog, Rachel said: “We should get ice cream after this.”

“It’s an ice cream kind of day.”

“Or bubble tea.”

“It’s also a bubble tea kind of day.”

They finished their hot dogs and balled up the crinkly wrappers and clutched them in their sweaty hands and just—watched the world go on.

“You’re quiet,” Rachel said eventually.

Lance scoffed. “ _ You’re _ quiet.”

And then they were both quiet.

“I know you’re upset with me,” Rachel said.

Lance felt his face twist.  _ Incredulous _ , Keith would call him. Lance could see them at their table, in their kitchen, in their apartment. He could see Keith waving a highlighter and a pack of post-its like a parody of a king, his lips twisted into a playful smile and his eyes dancing with light.

“What’re you talking about?” he said, twisting to look at his sister and finding Rachel already staring right back. He balked, a little. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you about the whole—engagement thing—”

“Yeah, that was pretty annoying.”

“—and I know you were upset with all of us after last year.”

Last year, Lance thought. And then: “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, okay, that was annoying too. But that was ages ago.”

( _ “Sure,” Rachel had allowed in that distant, distracted way she had that told Lance she was only half-listening. “Or because you’re not sure.” _ )

The disappointment still stung.

It hurt less, now, with Keith present and Keith-like in everyone’s view. It hurt less, now that everyone could see them and see that Lance wasn’t—

“Uh huh,” Rachel said.

“What are you even talking about?”

She squinted at him. “You don’t call,” she said flatly. “You never call home.”

“I call home all the time.”

“You call mom,” Rachel allowed. “Dad and Isabel and Marco. You talk to the twins and you and Veronica always act like time is a non-issue.”

“A non-issue,” Lance echoed, frowning properly now.

“I’m serious!”

“Yeah, I hear that.”

“We used to be like that,” she said. “You know. Like we could pick up where we left off.”

“There’s no  _ leaving off _ ,” Lance said, trying not to scoff but hearing the scratch of it in his voice nonetheless. “We’re family.”

“When was the last time we talked?”

“We’re talking right now! We talked when Keith and I got here! We talked—god, last week.”

“No.  _ Really _ talked.”

“Holy crap, Rachel.”

“Holy crap, Lance.”

They scowled at each other. Lance looked away first with a huff and stood to storm to throw away his crumpled wrapper. When he licked over his teeth, he could still taste the sweet white bun and the smoky meat.

Rachel followed, and then they were standing around the bin, staring down at the piled garbage: every coffee cup, napkin, and takeout container, suddenly seemed interesting.

“Aren’t we spending the day together?” Lance mumbled.

“Trying to.”

“We are!” He whirled away and looked back at their bench, already occupied by cooing pigeons. He crossed his arms. “What do you want to talk about? Like,  _ really _ talk about?”

Rachel pinched his arm and ignored Lance when he squawked and jerked away. “I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

“What does  _ that _ mean?”

“I mean it literally, you booger!”

“Oh my god, I’m not twelve anymore.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, sounding vaguely pouty. Lance glanced at her. “I know that.”

“You’re upset ‘cause I grew up.”

“No. I’m upset that you won’t talk to me.”

“I’m trying to talk to you now.”

“Tell me about Keith,” she said, hands on her hips and chin jutted.

Lance wondered if that’s what he looked like when he was feeling stubborn and upset. They had always been so similar. There were years where he could’ve proudly said that Rachel was his favourite sibling and suffered Marco’s griping. She still looked familiar. There was that sense of being reflected in her face, yes, but also: this was his sister, this was  _ Rachel _ , and he had always been able to tell her anything.

And then she had said:  _ or because you’re not sure _ . Like she had wanted to plant a seed of doubt that Lance neither wanted nor needed.

His surety burned him, these days. Unraveled him. Made him desperate to nose at Keith’s neck and feel his laughter.

“What about Keith?” he said finally.

Rachel threw her hands in the air and turned away. She marched back to the bench and with another flail of her hands, shooed the pigeons into cooing away.

“What?” Lance snapped, following.

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Oh geez, yeah. Because you want to know all about Keith.”

“I do. That’s why I asked.”

Lance dropped back onto the bench next to her, leaning back with his crossed arms and desperately trying not to think of pigeon shit. “Well,” he grumbled after a moment. “This is pleasant.”

“It could be.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“You don’t want to talk about Keith?”

Lance groaned and leaned his head back. “I really don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want to know about your life, dummy,” Rachel grumbled back. She kicked out her legs, the loose shoelaces of her boots flying. “I want to know what you do, and who you talk to, and what the city’s like. I just—want to know.”

“I go to school! I go home and hang out with my hamster! I talk to Keith and Hunk and, I don’t know, other people, but mostly them. The city’s stupidly cold in the winter and stupidly hot in the summer.”

“Great,” Rachel deadpanned. “I feel all caught up.”

“God, just—tell me about the wedding.”

“I want you to be in my party,” she said.

Lance straightened. “Huh? What party?”

“The bridal party. You know. With me. The bride.” She paused. “You and Veronica.”

Lance considered this for a moment, and then started: “Don’t you have, uh, maids?”

“Don’t want them.”

“‘kay,” he said. And then more firmly: “Okay, sure. What do I do?”

“You show up,” she said. “You look nice and stand at the front of the hall with me. And you take me drinking.”

“I can do that.”

“I want to get very drunk. Nick and his cousin are coming for drinking, too.”

“I’ve never seen Nick drunk.”

“It’s hilarious,” Rachel said. “He’s clumsy.”

“He’s  _ always _ clumsy.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You  _ know _ Nick.”

“Of course I know Nick.”

“I don’t know Keith!”

“If you want to know Keith, spend time with Keith?”

“ _ You _ tell me about him,” Rachel insisted. “I don’t know, tell me what you like about him!”

“I like his stupid hair,” Lance snapped back.

Rachel rolled her eyes.

“I tried to tell you about him last year,” he carried on in a grumble. “And you said  _ are you sure _ like I wasn’t.”

“You didn’t sound sure,” she said. “You don’t sound sure now.”

“Holy Jesus—really?  _ Really _ ?”

“Tell me about your tattoos!”

“I’m not telling you anything!”

“Great,” Rachel grumbled. And then louder: “Great! This was supposed to be fun and easy!”

“Oh my god,” Lance groaned. “Surprise, Rachel! Relationships are work. And you know what— _ you know what _ —”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“—you want to know what’s up with me so badly,  _ you _ could call. Yeah. Call me, once in a while, huh? Say ‘what’s up, Lance’ or even ‘are you still dating that boyfriend of yours, Lance’. You know. Anything.”

Rachel shook her head.

Lance’s scowl deepend. “Great,” he said. “Just—fabulous. Really excellent.”

“I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“You’re doing a bad job of it.”

“I think,” she said. “I  _ think _ you’re mad because you know I’m right.”

“I wasn’t even mad! I am now, but I wasn’t!” He paused. “I’m going to regret asking this, but what exactly are you right about?”

“Keith!”

“Oh boy.”

“I mean it! You spend two months—two months!—complaining about the guy and then you come home for the summer and are like, ‘haha we’re moving in together’—”

“There was nothing ‘haha’ about it!”

“—and we’re all just supposed to be okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Lance snapped. “Yeah! You’re my sister. You’re supposed to be happy for me. You’re supposed to be all—like—fucking,  _ good for you Lance _ .”

“Fucking,” she echoed.

“I’m mad!”

“Great.”

“Great!”

The pigeons cooed and waddled about their feet, their beady eyes looking up at Lance like he was hiding bread or cheese or whatever they wanted. He tried to wrestle his scowl back under control (the pigeons didn’t deserve that) and scratched uselessly at his neck.

(“Cut your nails,” Keith had said.

“I’m fine!”

“You remember finals? I remember finals.”

“...it didn’t scar.”

“Either eradicate your nervous tic,” Keith had continued. “Or cut your nails.”)

Lance slapped his hands back to his thighs. The pigeons, startled, fluttered away in a puff of weird pigeon-smell and flapping pigeon-feathers.

Doves, he thought pathetically. Pigeons. Weddings.

“You don’t even know Keith,” he said, quieter than he’d meant to.

“I could know Keith,” Rachel said, calmer now, like they had grumbled out most of the frustration whirling around between them. There was a still a painful vice around Lance’s heart, something sharp for it to beat against. Disappointment. “If you wanted me to, I could know Keith.”

“I brought him so you could know him,” Lance said. “And so he could know you. And, uh, everyone else. Duh. But—” He broke off and huffed a long breath through his nose.

“Yeah,” Rachel allowed. “Yeah.”

“Stop asking me if I’m sure,” Lance said. “Are  _ you _ sure? Are you sure you want to get married? Are you sure you want to marry Nick?”

“Of course I am!”

“Yeah,” Lance said, growing loud again. “Yeah! Me too.”

Rachel finally looked at him again, her eyes narrowed and her cheeks a little flushed. Flustered, angry Rachel. Rachel who was known to slam doors and run until her knees hurt and yell her feelings. Rachel, who had been one of Lance’s best friends for so many years, and always his sister.

“What?” he said, his shoulders slumping. “Just...say whatever you want to say.”

“Did you put him in your nebula?” she said. “Have you added a Keith-tattoo to your—your skin?”

And that—

That made Lance heat all over, made his skin feel restless and his fingers twitch. He wanted to look away but he was stuck, with his neck stiff and his cheeks burning and his mind racing and he thought he could feel every bit of his tattoos.

Burning. Yeah.

Burning.

“No,” he choked out.

“Yeah,” Rachel said, sounding so satisfied Lance wanted to scream. “Yeah! You’ve got everyone else there. You’ve got Nick! You’ve got Hunk! But no Keith.”

“That’s—”

“Probably because you’re not dumb and you know better than to tattoo your college boyfriend onto your skin!”

“Stop saying skin!” Lance managed, finally flailing his sweaty hands uselessly. “Just stop!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Yes,” he said, dragging his hands over his face with a groan. “Yes. You’re so wrong, you don’t even know.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s not a small thing, okay!” He tucked his hands in his armpits and tried, vainly, to find where the pigeons had fluttered off to. “It’s not—it’s not a small thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Rachel,” he moaned. “Don’t make me talk about this. I’ll actually die.”

“Fine,” she sighed and slumped back against the bench. Somewhere, a car honked, loud and high-pitched and obnoxious. “You have to think about it though, Lance. I’m serious.”

“I do,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“I said: I do!” He hunched and felt a pain in his neck and something like his feathers fluffing all over his skin. “I think about it all the time! I spend way too much time thinking about it!”

Rachel opened her mouth and then, mercifully, closed it.

“Look, it’s just—it’s—” He broke off with a groan and hugged his arms closer to himself. “It’s a lot, okay? I want to get it right. I want to—I want to find something so perfect that’ll show Keith what he means to me and—hell, I want him to swoon. Yeah.” He paused, and then more firmly: “ _ Yeah _ . I want him to see what I pick and just freaking swoon. Fall over into my arms and say something like ‘oh Lance, I never knew’.”

Except Keith knew. Keith, somehow, always, knew.

And that was what made Lance sure, maybe.

Rachel leaned her elbow on one knee and her chin on her fist, making her face looked squished and ridiculous at the bottom and just emphasizing the  _ incredulous _ lilt of her eyebrows. “Uh huh,” she said.

Lance slumped back. “You’re not listening.”

“I’m trying. I swear to god, I am trying.” She waved her other hand. “Carry on.”

Carry on, Lance thought. He scowled.

“I’m serious! I’m listening!”

He shook his head and looked away, gathering what he could of his thoughts, and then looked back at his sister and said: “I’m not hesitating. I just want to get it right.”

“Right.”

“Yes,  _ right _ . I want to get it so right—and then—” And like a lightbulb—or a hundred stars—lighting up behind his eyes, Lance knew.

He straightened.

“And then— _ what _ ?” Rachel said, still hunched over with his face bouncing against her fist as she spoke.

Lance grinned.

Rachel slumped a little more. “You’re so weird.”

“I’m going to ask him to marry me,” Lance said, his excitement making his face feel stretched and full and bright. “I’m going to put him in my nebula and then I’m going to ask him to marry me.”

Rachel sat up, frowning and leaving a red circle on her cheek. “You’re nineteen,” she said after a moment.

“Oh well,” Lance scoffed. “I’ll be twenty soon.”

“Twenty’s...not much better.” Rachel rubbed idly at her chin, looking thoughtful. “You’re just so young.”

Lance’s smile fell away. His shoulders slumped. “This would be a great time to say ‘I’m happy for you, Lance.’”

“I am,” Rachel said, and he almost believed her. “It’s—it’s nice that you’re happy and in love and stuff.”

“But?”

“But you’re  _ young _ .”

Lance squinted at her. Rachel shrugged.

“Young,” he echoed.

“Yeah—”

“Okay, real talk: are you having a little brother crisis, too? Are you and Marco riding the same weird wave?”

“What!”

“I’m serious!”

They glowered at each other.

“Take it back,” Rachel said.

“No way,” Lance snapped back. “You are like two steps from setting up a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor.”

“I am not!”

“Next you’ll be glaring at my boyfriend every chance you get—”

“He seems perfectly nice!”

“And showing up at my apartment to make sure we haven’t eloped—”

“Oh god, please don’t elope.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “We won’t. Probably.”

“Probably.”

Lance shrugged.

“Are you serious?” Rachel said, rubbing at her chin a little harder, an anxious habit that was looking a little too familiar for Lance’s taste. “About—” She broke off with a sigh.

Lance raised his eyebrows. “Keith?”

“Yeah. I guess. Yeah.”

“Yes,” he said. “Super sure and super serious.”

“Don’t get married at twenty.”

“We have to get engaged first. And then! We elope.”

“Hilarious. I’m going to tell mom.”

“Please don’t.”

Rachel shook her head and dropped her hand to her lap. Some of the pigeons had returned and were shuffling back and forth in their silly pigeon way, their heads bobbing and their chests fluffed out. Coo coo, coo coo. It was soothing, almost.

“So many pigeons,” Rachel mumbled.

“I like pigeons,” Lance said.

“You’re so weird.”

“I’m telling you about myself!”

“I know you, you booger! I want to hear about your  _ life _ .”

“Well,” Lance started with a roll of his eyes. “I go to school and sometimes it sucks and sometimes it doesn’t. I live with this boy I like a whole bunch and sometimes he’s grumpy and sometimes he’s not. My sister doesn’t seem to like him, for some reason.”

“I like him just fine!”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m serious,” Rachel huffed with a distracted tap of her foot. “Keith seems like a perfectly normal...guy.”

“He does?”

“I like him,” she insisted. “He’s great. I mean, I think he’s great. Nick likes him too. I’m glad you brought him.” She paused. “Don’t get married yet.”

“Yeah, about that: don’t mention it. Ever again.”

“I am definitely going to mention it again.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of it, then!”

“I can’t help it! You’re just—you’re still a teenager, Lance! Moved in with your boyfriend and living far away and raising a hamster—”

“She’s a great hamster.”

“I’m sure she is,” Rachel sighed. “I’m sure Keith is a wonderful boyfriend. I’m sure you’re very happy together.”

Lance tilted his head. The pigeons carried on and on. “But what?”

“I don’t know. It’s like…” She trailed off.

“Yeah?”

“You can never really be sure, can you?” she said finally, frowning and looking down at her hands in her lap. “People don’t always stay sure.”

And there it was again: click and ba-ding, another light bulb went off and Lance felt something heavy flip over in his belly. He took a breath and shuffled closer to his sister, one palm dragging along the worn wood of the bench.

“Rachel?” he said softly.

She grimaced at her lap.

He poked her shoulder, once and lightly.

“Do you remember when Luis was getting married?” she said. “When he was freaking out about weddings and wedding planning and cake?”

“Yup.”

“I remember him sitting at the table and complaining and complaining and complaining, and then he said: ‘what if we get divorced anyways?’ Like, they go through all this trouble just to split up twenty years later.”

Lance took another breath, long and cool. The day was dragging on and on, getting hotter by the minute. The pigeons were starting to settle, their little round bodies still on the sidewalk. The little park was mostly empty, mostly quiet. He could still taste hot dog on his tongue and his teeth, and his sister was having a very quiet crisis next to him.

He hadn’t called in a long time. He hadn’t picked up the phone and said:  _ how are you _ ? Now there was this yawning, warm kind of distance between them and he wasn’t entirely sure how to get through it.

“I thought he was being dumb,” Rachel continued, sounding thoughtful and distracted and sad all at once. “I told him I thought he was being dumb.”

“I remember a little of that.”

“But now—” She shook her head. “Mom and dad loved each other for ages.”

“They still do.”

“ _ They _ were sure.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, as gently as he could manage. “And they still are.”

Rachel looked at him, finally, frowning and seeming pale and a little withered. She wasn’t entirely herself, and he wondered how he hadn’t noticed it sooner: there was a little fear in her, and Lance had always thought of his sisters as absolutely fearless. Unstoppable.

He counted to ten.

“Let’s say,” he started slowly, tapping his fingers lightly against her shoulder. “Hm, Keith and I are together for twenty years.”

“Lance—”

“And! And. We have twenty really great years. Mostly. You know how it is.”

Her lips twitched.

“We raise forty hamsters and we have a dog and we get a bank account together—”

“Is that what you think adulthood is?”

“Excuse you, I  _ am _ an adult.”

“Only technically.”

“Just listen!”

Rachel snickered and it was lovely to hear. It lightened some of the dreadful weight in Lance’s stomach and shooed away some of his fearful memories of Luis’s restlessness in the weeks after the separation, in the year after the divorce. It pushed out his memories of his dad moving out, and welcomed memories of Isabel moving in, with her boxes and her smiles and the soft way she invited him to explore her things, her life, that was now partly his.

“Twenty years,” he said. “And then one day, we split up.”

The little bit of Rachel’s smile that had reappeared vanished. Lance tapped her shoulder again, drawing her attention back to him.

“That’s okay,” he said. “That would be okay.”

_ Wasteful _ , he remembered Luis moaning to the ceiling while Lisa sighed and rubbed his knee.

“Would it,” Rachel sighed.

“Yeah,” Lance said, firm and sure. “We’d have twenty years of loving each other. And I’ll take twenty years over, uh, no years.”

Rachel lifted her chin. She touched her fingertips to Lance’s hand at her shoulder, and then pulled away. “He’s going to stop loving me one day,” she said. “Or worse: I’m going to stop loving him.”

“Maybe,” Lance allowed. “Maybe not.”

“You can’t build a marriage on ‘maybe not.’”

Lance smiled. “Sure you can.”

“What do you know?”

“Lots,” he said loftily. “I know so many things. I’m half-university educated now.”

“University doesn’t teach you useful things. I would know.”

“You did it wrong.”

She pinched him and Lance shrieked his outrage at the pigeons, loud enough to make them scatter and his sister laugh into his shoulder.

“You can stop projecting onto me now,” he said into her hair. Rachel made a disgruntled noise.

“Whatever,” she grumbled. “Let’s go get ice cream. Or bubble tea.”

“Bubble tea.”

“Bubble tea, then.”

 

***

 

He told her—things.

Lots of things. Not everything. But many things.

Red, and tutoring, and how boring his painting job had been. A little bit of how he didn’t always sleep well, and how Keith had rearranged the bedroom, and the audiobook Adam had sent and that Lance still hadn’t finished. He told her about Hunk, and them, and the stressed week of Adam’s visit and Adam’s trip to Vancouver.

He didn’t tell her that he woke up in the night and sometimes Keith came and found him and coaxed him back to bed, with soft words and kisses and warm hands. He didn’t tell her about the mornings he’d drag Keith back into his arms, holding tight like if they never left the bed, never left the bedroom, the day would never begin. He didn’t tell her about coming home to find Keith keeping careful watch over Hunk while he was sick, or Keith storming his way to the engineering campus to drag Hunk home, and he didn’t tell her about his own disappointment that Hunk didn’t want to live with them.

But he told her things all the same.

“I’ll call,” he promised. “You know, once in a while.”

“Me too.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

 

***

 

“Bring Keith,” she said idly on the way back.

“Huh?”

“To my bachelorette.” She paused. “Which is also Nick’s stag party.”

“This is so weird,” Lance mumbled to the window.

“Tell me about it.” She hummed. “But the wedding will be fun.”

Lance smiled.

 

***

 

“Where have you two been all day?” Veronica asked when they stumbled through the door together.

“Food,” Lance said.

“Bubble tea,” Rachel added.

“And you brought me nothing,” Veronica sighed, and turned back to her laptop. “Traitors.”

“Is Keith back?” Lance asked, puttering into the kitchen to peer over her shoulder.

Veronica swatted him away. “Yeah. He looks tired.”

“He’s an introvert,” Lance told them, a little proudly.

Both his sisters frowned at him. 

Keith, leaned over his open backpack on the bed, jumped when Lance opened the door and said, a little loudly: “I’m home, honey packet!”

“Honey packet,” Keith echoed, grimacing as he turned. “That’s weird.”

“It’s you,” Lance sing-songed and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Leave it open!” Marco yelled from down the hall.

Someone told him to stop being a maniac.

Lance thought he could hear Marco pouting, even from his bedroom.

“How was your day?” Keith said, whirling back to his backpack and zipping it shut.

“Fine,” Lance said. “How was yours?”

“Good.”

He hummed and studied the hunched shape of Keith’s shoulders for a moment, and then shuffled closer. “Veronica said you look tired,” Lance said, pulling Keith close to him and pressing his face to Keith’s neck. He huffed a contented sigh.

Keith leaned back into him, relaxing and letting out a breath. He patted Lance’s arms, tight around his waist. “I am tired,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

Keith laughed, breathy and short. “I sleep like the dead.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Hunk’s parents are nice.”

“Aren’t they?”

 

***

 

Rachel stuck around for dinner, though Isabel and Lance’s mother were out, likely with his father.

They ordered pizza. Horrible, half-price-for-students pizza that Marco had to go and get. He complained that his car would smell of greasy cheese for days.

“So be it,” Veronica sighed. “A worthy sacrifice.”

“You could just say ‘thank you’ like a normal person.”

“Nah.”

Keith and Lance shared a seat at the table, their hips awkwardly pressed together and Keith’s hand steady at Lance’s waist. Rachel and Veronica were playing a game that Lance barely understood, with its flashing lights and the weird sounds the tablet made. Marco watched them intently for two slices of pizza, then grabbed a third and dragged his chair closer to Keith and Lance.

“What’ve you two been up to?” he said, only halfway-casually.

Keith opened his mouth to respond, but Lance beat him to it: “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What does that mean,” Keith mumbled.

It was all very—nice. Very normal. Laughter and bad pizza and three of his four siblings bickering back and forth. In the middle of it all was Keith, sitting quietly and eating more pizza than anyone should, and impressing Lance’s sisters with his bottomless pit of a stomach.

“Have you played Scrabble with my mom yet?” Rachel asked eventually.

“Not yet,” Keith said, like he was waiting for the chance.

“ _ That’s _ the true test.”

Veronica poked her. Or, jabbed at her side. “Don’t scare him.”

“I’m just warning him!”

“It’s just Scrabble,” Marco promised. “You’ll be fine.”

“Oh,” Keith said.

“It’s my dad and Monopoly you have to be scared of.”

“...oh?”

“Nobody should play Monopoly with my dad,” Lance said, and scowled at Marco. “Don’t give him bad ideas.”

Marco shrugged, mustering up all the innocence he had in his lanky body, and Keith leaned heavily against Lance.

And yeah, it was all very nice.

 

***

 

Rachel went home. Veronica went back to work. Marco passed out on the couch. And the sky grew darker and darker.

Lance dug out their old chest set, with its dusty board and pieces covered in scratch ‘n sniff stickers. He set it on the table in front of Keith with great pride, spreading his arms in something of a  _ ta da _ gesture.

Keith looked up at him.

“Chess,” Lance said. “Like, real chess.”

“It’s always real chess.”

“Fine! Non-virtual chess.”

Keith smiled. “This is an odd sort of foreplay.”

“This is great foreplay, thank you very much.”

Lance was frowning at the board and Keith was frowning at Lance when Isabel and Lance’s mother came home. 

“I have leftover cake,” Lance’s mother said, settling at the table to watch.

“Don’t distract me, mom!”

She smiled.

Keith kicked Lance under the table. “Hurry up!”

“‘Hurry up,’ he says, like I don’t need to think about the best way to  _ kick his ass _ .”

“You’re losing,” Keith deadpanned.

“Nobody’s  _ losing _ until they’ve already lost, Keith!”

Lance and his mother ate the cake and Isabel made them all some tea that was floral and deep and warm. Keith did, in the end, win, and texted Hunk to celebrate.

Hunk replied: It has to happen once in a while.

 

***

 

He was at home and homesick all at once. It felt good.

 

***

 

By the time they shuffled their way to bed, with the clocks all ticking past one and Lance’s mother waking Isabel from her slumped position at the table, Lance was starting to feel anxious.

Anxious.

He felt so clear-headed, still; so rested. If he slept, would he give it up? Would he have a restless night and wake up tired and would it be doubly bad, now that he remembered it didn’t always have to be like that?

Keith knocked their elbows together while they brushed their teeth, his eyes meeting Lance’s in the bathroom mirror.

He knew. He always knew.

Lance grinned a toothpaste-covered grin and Keith shook his head.

Anxious. He tried to stuff it down and away. He counted to twelve and then back to zero and repeated to himself, over and over: I’m going to sleep well.

Back in the bedroom, Keith touched his wrist and then took firm hold and pulled Lance to him: one, two, stumbled steps, and then Keith’s lips at his cheek and Keith’s forehead against his.

“What’re you thinking about?” Keith said quietly, when Lance had stopped teetering on his feet.

“Nothing,” Lance said, and then shivered and thought better of it: “I’m worried.”

“About?”

Lance considered his words. He licked his lips. “I had a good day, fighting with Rachel and everything included.”

“Because you slept well.”

“Yeah.”

Keith hummed. His eyes fluttered closed and Lance watched his thoughtful expression, the curl of his eyelashes and the shape of his eyebrows.

Keith opened his eyes. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“And you know I’d never lie to you?”

Lance’s lips twitched. “Probably.”

Keith let it slide. Lance counted one, two, three, and then Keith said: “You’re going to sleep well tonight, too.”

In the hall, the clocks were ticking. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” A breath. “I’m going to be with you, and you’re going to be safe, and I’m going to keep you safe.”

“I don’t know if safe is what I need,” Lance mumbled.

“Maybe,” Keith said. “But tell the anxiety all the same: I’m here and you’re safe.”

Lance took a long breath in, let it back out, and then pulled back and nodded. “I’m going to sleep well tonight.”

Keith smiled. “You’re going to sleep well tonight.”

“I’m going to sleep well with you tonight.”

“You’re going to sleep well with me tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Lance said. “Sounds wonderful.”

“Yes,” Keith agreed solemnly.

And they went to bed, and Lance was at peace.

***

 

It wouldn’t always work.

Sometimes, like tonight, but not always.

Keith always wanted to be enough, and he was—lord, but he was. Lance knew it in his bones.

 

***

 

“I had a good day, too,” Keith mumbled against Lance’s neck.

They were pressed so close together they might’ve been one shape, one lump, under the blankets. Lance dragged his fingertips over Keith’s hand, holding him tight over his waist, and contemplated the wall.

“You’re having a good trip?” he asked, his voice hesitant and his words heavy on his tongue.

“Yes,” Keith said, his lips and his breath tickling that spot, that spot that was all his and Lance had gladly given it away without even knowing—that warm spot, at the back of his neck, where Keith hid promises and kisses.

“I’m happy,” Lance whispered to the wall.

Keith’s arm tightened. He was warm against Lance’s back. Steady. “Good,” he said. “I’m so glad, Lance. I’m just—glad.”

“Me too.”

***

 

“I love you,” Keith whispered as Lance drifted to sleep, first for once and feeling heavy and comfortable and ready for rest.

“I love you, too,” he tried to say, but all that came out was a sigh, and he dreamed of stars.

 

***

 

(There were a few things that Lance didn’t notice.

Keith’s flush when he burst into the bedroom with his greeting and his smile and his warm embrace.

Keith’s rush to zip a side pocket of his backpack shut, the tear of the sound into the room.

Keith nudging his backpack behind the suitcase, out of sight and out of mind. Or Keith dragging his fingers over Lance’s in between turns at chess, feeling the warmth of his hands and the soft nubs of his knuckles.

And because he didn’t notice these things, he didn’t think to look for a little tissue-wrapped ring, tucked in a nondescript envelope and hiding in that side pocket, with its engraved stars that would hide themselves against skin, like a promise, like a kiss.

“Keith?” Hunk had said that afternoon, while they wandered a bustling street market with his parents.

Keith had stopped, under a stark white awning, and he had lifted the gold band between his finger and thumb, and he had studied the impossible stars and the impossible gold of the outside.

“Keith,” Hunk had said again, coming up to peer over his shoulder. And then: “Lance?”

Keith could hear his smile. “Lance,” he had agreed in a breath.

It had felt a little like destiny. Like a shooting star.

And with Lance sleeping peacefully in his arms, breathing softly against the pillow and with his fingers twitching every so often against Keith’s, and with his childhood bedroom around them—

And like this, Keith was sure.)


	4. Chapter 4

“You look nice,” Keith said, the morning of the wedding.

“That’s my job,” Lance said, smoothing down the front of his dress shirt with a frown. “Should I have brought a jacket?”

“You don’t have a jacket.”

“Okay, plan for when we get home: jackets. Nice—sport coats or whatever they’re called.”

Keith smiled. “You look nice,” he said again. “You look good, actually.”

“You’re very supportive,” Lance said and pecked his cheek, a little wetly, a little loudly. Keith didn’t seem to mind, still sitting on the bed in his comfy clothes and with his hair tied back in a messy shape that was more ball than a ponytail.

“I try,” he said, catching Lance’s sleeve as he started to pull back.

Lance let out a muted shriek. “Don’t wrinkle me!”

“You’re going to roll it up anyways.”

“That’s my choice!”

Keith tugged all the same and Lance fell into him, tasting and echoing Keith’s teasing laughter.

It was a warm morning. It was a good morning. It was a lovely morning. Lance loved the days that started with kisses from and for Keith, whatever the rest of the hours brought. It would be easy to crawl back into bed and let Keith make a proper mess of him, untuck and wrinkle his nice shirt and tug away his tie and leave marks on his neck.

But he pulled back because his sister was getting married and he was strong enough to resist the temptation that was his boyfriend.

Mostly, anyways.

“I’ll see you soon?” Lance said, sounding disgustingly hopeful to his own ears.

Keith’s smile twitched and grew. It touched his eyes, in that way only Keith’s little smiles could, and made his whole face seem brighter and calmer and cheerier. Lance thought: that was for him, that was because of him; he could make Keith just like that, sometimes just for him.

“Of course,” Keith said, releasing Lance’s sleeve and leaning back on his hands. “Save a dance for me?”

Heat spread along Lance’s skin in little bursts, fanning out from the middle of his chest and along his shoulders and up his neck, tickling at his chin. He felt everything in him stand suddenly straighter, his hair feeling like it was tingling and beginning to point up and up and maybe he’d fly, again; maybe he’d bring Keith with him and they’d go up and past the clouds and the blue, blue sky, and they’d look at the stars together and let them point the way to infinity.

“You make me think weird things,” he said.

Keith tilted his head. “Ah,” he said. And then, a little triumphantly: “Horndog.”

Lance bared his teeth and Keith laughed again, and Lance could see the sound and joy of it under his skin and fluttering along his sleeves and the collar of his loose shirt.

“I’ll save a hundred,” he said. “A thousand. Just for you. As many as you want.”

And there it was still, that perfect Keith smile and all the daydreams and pleasure it promised. “I’m a dangerous man to make promises to,” Keith said.

“I’ll make them anyway.”

“Good,” Keith breathed and sat forward again, sliding his palms along his knees. “Come kiss me again.”

Lance grinned.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re going to mess up your hair,” Veronica said when Lance rolled down the passenger side window, smashing his finger against the already-worn button. Thoughtfully, she added: “And mine.”

“Oh well,” Lance sighed, and closed his eyes against the summer hair whipping at his face, at his cheeks and the tip of his nose.

“You’re going to get dirty.”

“Oh well!”

“Treat me like a grown-up, he says,” Veronica scoffed. “And then what do you do?”

“You’re annoying,” Lance said affectionately.

Nick greeted them when they got to the apartment, looking exhausted and slightly green but happy all the same, in his boxers and socks and half-on shirt.

“That’s a good look for you,” Veronica said, stepping past him and into his and Rachel’s little cluttered, homey apartment.

“Hi Nick,” Lance said.

Nick patted his back and shut the door and went to the couch to scoop up his pants. “I’m getting married today,” he said, looking up at the ceiling.

“Not without pants you aren’t,” Veronica said.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Lance was pretty sure Nick had spent the last two days hung-the-hell-over. Nick, who was generous and social even through his awkwardness, had latched onto Keith, at the stag/bachelorette/excuse to drink too much, along with his cousin and best man, Matias. Keith had suffered their attentions, and fooled everyone, in his usual Keith fashion, into believing that he was totally sober until he very clearly wasn’t.

“Oh boy,” Lance had said, leaning against their slightly sticky table and blinking blearily up at Keith. “He’s gonna fall over.”

“I will not,” Keith had said, and immediately tripped.

Veronica had everything on video, including Nick’s loud complaints that he “had just wanted to keep up with Keith” and that he’d “never be sober again.”

At the couch, Nick unceremoniously shoved his way into his pants.

“Where’s Matias?” Lance asked, tugging unhelpfully at Nick’s tie.

“Coming,” Nick mumbled. And then: “I might throw up.”

From behind the closed bedroom door came Rachel’s voice: “You’ll be fine!”

Nick, grimacing, looked Lance in the eye and said, as serious as he’d ever been: “No. No, I won’t.”

Lance patted his shoulder and followed Veronica to the bedroom, drawn by the sound of Rachel’s huge sighs.

“Your husband-to-be’s a mess,” Veronica said, kicking the door shut again behind them.

Rachel whirled away from the mirror to scowl at them. “Weddings are stupid,” she said. She jabbed a finger in Lance’s direction. “Don’t get married.”

“Weddings are great,” he huffed.

“Uh huh.” Rachel turned back to the mirror and smoothed down the front of her gown, though gown felt like an overstatement; inappropriate, really, to who his sister was, with her dress’s simple silhouette and the glittering bracelets at her wrists.

“Can we help?” Veronica asked, coming to stand next to Rachel so they were both reflected in the full length mirror, smiling at each other.

Lance tossed himself onto the bed, leaning back and watching them.

“Sure,” Rachel said. “Go tell everyone the wedding’s cancelled and Nick and I are just gonna go to city hall and be done with it.”

“Yeah, yeah, Luis.”

“I understand now, okay!”

“Stage fright,” Lance piped up. “That’s what this is.”

Rachel’s reflection scowled at him. He smiled back.

“Okay,” she said. And then louder: “Okay! Is Matias here? Has he taken Nick?”

Lance shrugged.

“I don’t think so,” Veronica said.

“Ugh! I’m stuck then.”

“We could just ask him to close his eyes,” Lance suggested.

“He’s supposed to get to the hall first.”

“We could stop for burgers.”

Veronica snorted. Rachel turned to glare properly at him.

“Burgers,” she repeated. “In my dress.”

“Bring a jacket.”

Rachel opened her mouth. Closed it. She turned back to her reflection and frowned, smoothing her hands down the front of her dress again.

“Big, greasy burgers,” Lance said. “Cheesy, monstrous burgers.”

“I would eat four,” Rachel said.

“You would eat four,” Veronica agreed.

 

* * *

 

 

“Close your eyes!” Lance yelled into the living room.

Nick let out a squeaky _harumph_ of a sound and threw himself onto the couch face first.

 

* * *

 

“This is a bad idea,” Rachel said with half of her third burger gone.

“Do you feel better?” Veronica said, licking some salt from her fingers.

“No.”

“She does,” Lance piped up in the back and crammed a handful of curly fries into his mouth.

 

* * *

 

 

Best bridal party ever, he decided. When he said it out loud, Veronica threw back her head and laughed until she was crying and panicking about her make-up.

 

* * *

 

 

mama: WE HAVE KEITH

mama: HE LOOKS VERY HANDSOME AND I TOLD HIM SO

mama: NOW YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAHA

 

* * *

 

 

the hunkiest: tell rachel good luck for me!!!

the hunkiest: or congratulations, i’m not sure. Do you think she needs luck?

 

* * *

 

 

Keith: everyone is very loud and very happy. I love you and I miss you.

 

* * *

 

The hall was part of a community centre that Lance had visited many times before for birthday parties and family nonsense gatherings and a wedding he only half-remembered. He liked the wood panelling of the roof and the soft pastels of the walls and the way his dress shoes clicked against the ground as he went.

Rachel and Veronica rushed to the bathroom, dragging him along and chattering in half-finished sentences that mostly gave Lance a headache. He barely had a chance to look at the decorations—the lights and the fabric flowers, all blue and yellow and pleasant; the chairs with their delicate, floral decorations, and the smell of something sweet in the air—before Veronica had shut and locked the swinging door behind them.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Rachel said, leaning over a sink and eyeing her face in the mirror.

”Your face looks wonderful,” Lance said, puttering up behind his sisters and peering over both their heads. He added: “Very bridal.”

“You’re a good brother.”

“I know.”

Lance unlocked the door briefly, peering out at the hall and wondering—

“Stop pining for your boyfriend!” Veronica barked.

Lance hunched and mumbled: “I can’t help it.”

“I’m getting married,” Rachel moaned at the sink. “I’m going to be somebody’s wife.”

Somebody, but not just anybody.

 

* * *

 

 

All of Rachel’s anxiety seemed to vanish when she finally stood at the head of the hall, her shoes quiet on the soft carpet laid out for her and Nick. Lance, standing just behind her and grinning wide the whole way through, watched her shoulders relax and her breathing settle. He thought he could see her smiling, even with her facing away from him, because Nick relaxed too, and his eyes grew bright and there was an unselfconscious flash of his teeth as he mumbled something to her that nobody could hear.

Lance thought he knew what that felt like, that moment of the world turning right and centering and building to something beautiful and heartbreakingly soothing. He thought he knew. He was sure he knew.

And when he tore his eyes away from his sister to look for Keith, he found that he was already being watched, and Keith was already smiling, like he had just been waiting for Lance to look back at him. Hunk sniffed against Keith’s shoulder and Nadia was leaning heavily on his other arm, watching with her lips slightly parted and her eyes slightly sleepy, and Keith was looking at Lance like there was no-one else in the room.

Lance could step to him, wade through his family and crash into Keith’s waiting arms, and Keith would hold him steady and whisper nothing in his ear and press kisses to his cheeks. Lance could say _I love you_ and it wouldn’t capture a bit of everything, of anything, he was feeling, tight around his heart and working to tear him open and let the whole world in.

He looked away and watched Rachel whisper her vows, and listened to Veronica sigh her pleasure at his side.

 

* * *

 

 

They had a few hours, in between the reception and the ceremony, and Rachel shooed them all away to steal away with Nick, pressing her laughter into his shoulder and Nick pressing kisses to her forehead as they went, stumbling and close like they’d never let go of each other.

Not a hint a fear.

“Don’t they know they have a honeymoon for that?” Marco huffed.

Veronica rolled her eyes and patted his shoulder.

They went outside, all of them, a gaggle of smiling people and warm laughter. The twins burst into a game of pretend, wrangling in another pair of children Lance didn’t recognize, and Isabel and Lance’s father claimed a spot on a bench under a rustling tree.

The sky was clear, mostly: just wisps of cloud here and there, taunting them all.

“That was so nice,” Hunk moaned, dragging Lance into a wobbling hug the moment they were outside. He rubbed his cheek against Lane’s hair, sighing and squeezing.

Lance laughed and rubbed his back. “Yeah,” he agreed, burying his face against Hunk’s shoulder.

“You’re sappy,” Keith admonished near Lance’s ear.

“Whatever, Keith,” Hunk scoffed. “We all know _you’re_ the hopeless romantic here.”

”There’s nothing hopeless about it.”

“Ugh,” Hunk sighed with affection. “You’re so gross.”

Lance could feel himself starting to decompress, sagging in Hunk’s arms and listening to his family laugh around him and even hearing Keith breath, in and out, in and out. He rubbed his face against Hunk’s shirt and ignored Hunk’s _harumph_ of half-hearted annoyance.

“When’re you coming home?” Lance grumbled.

“I can’t hear you.”

He lifted his chin and scowled at Hunk. “I said: _when_ are you coming _home_?”

Keith sighed. Loudly.

“Shush you.”

“I’m right here,” Hunk said. “You can’t complain yet.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“Before school starts.”

Keith sighed again.

“What,” Hunk said. “What. Are you going to start now, too?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Keith replied with a shrug.

“Space is a thing, vegetables,” Hunk huffed.

Lance, snuggled up to him, didn’t give that a whole lot of credit.

“A whole summer,” he complained. “A whole summer without Hunk.”

“Terrible,” Keith said.

“Oh my god,” Hunk said.

 

* * *

 

 

“Uncle Keith, what’s a zucchini?”

“It’s a squash. I think.”

“A squash?”

“Yeah. Like...butternut…”

“Like pumpkins!”

“Yeah. Yes! Yes. Like pumpkins.”

“Huh.”

“Also, Hunk. To me. And your Uncle Lance.”

“You’re all zucchinis?”

“Yes.”

“Am I a zucchini?”

“Not yet.”

 

* * *

 

 

“What’re you saying to my niblings?”

“Excuse you. They’re my niblings now, too.”

“Uh huh.”

“Anyone who calls me _Uncle Keith_ is mine forever.”

“You don’t _own_ children, you weirdo.”

 

* * *

 

 

The three of them went for a walk; or, Keith and Lance dragged Hunk along the nearby park and the sidewalks with their cracks and peeks of green.

“Shouldn’t we be spending time with everyone?” Hunk said. “Shouldn’t we be, like, wedding...ing…”

“That’s not how weddings work,” Keith said.

“We’ll be back for the reception,” Lance promise.

“Guh,” Hunk sighed.

Lance had, of course, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. It was a sunny afternoon, after all: he deserved the sun on his skin and the feel of Keith and Hunk’s hands on his wrists, at his elbows. And he liked the bunching, tight feel of his rolled sleeves against his arms. It made him feel...unstoppable, maybe. Alive, for sure. Older, perhaps.

They went nowhere together. Eventually even Hunk was happy to just be wandering, and watching the summer sun cast that bright orange hue over everything, every memory. Sometimes a cool breeze would rustle up and stir Lance’s hair and give Keith an excuse to slip an arm around him, or press a quick kiss to his shoulder that burned Lance through the fabric of his dress shirt.

“What do you think Rachel and Nick are doing now?” Hunk asked when they came upon another park, with winding paths and trees with whispering leaves. Someone was cooking hot dogs, or maybe hamburgers, or maybe just corn, and the smell teased at their nostrils and made Lance’s mouth water, even with his belly still full of the stressed, pre-wedding meal.

“We know what they’re doing,” Keith said with a grimace.

But Lance said: “Sleeping, probably.”

And hadn’t they earned it.

Keith and Lance shared a mediocre maple walnut ice cream and Hunk ate a little ice cream sandwich in two bites and then the three of them pulled off to the side of one of the paths and watched a pair of children try, and fail, to climb a tree.

Summer, Lance was realizing, was one of the best times in this city, too, with the sun glaring down at them all and the sky seeming far away. The light carried on and on and pricked at his skin and made Keith rub absently at his cheeks, and Lance loved the way the clear blue seeped overhead and made him think of the Great Lakes and the downtown skyscrapers—less claustrophobic and more a steel and concrete signal of how far the sky could be, how very high you had to reach to scrape at it. Here in the sun, with the green grass and the wavering trees, Lance felt like he could reach out at any moment and squeeze his hands around sunbeams and distant wind chimes and pull them close and feel nothing but warmth and light and the soft falling of summer.

It felt like home, he remembered as Keith and Hunk pulled him away to start the slow trek back. His tattoos felt warm under his shirt, creeping against his skin to dance against the back of his neck. Home, he knew as he watched Keith and Hunk walk together just two steps ahead of him, the shapes of their backs and the slope of their shoulders and the remembrance of feeling safe tucked between them. Home.

And Lance knew just what to do with that.

 

* * *

 

 

“Where’ve you three been?” Marco huffed when they came back to the little green space attached to the community centre. Nadia and Sylvio were bickering on a bench nearby and Lisa had wedged herself between them, sighing loudly every time one of them said something particularly rude.

“We went walking,” Lance said with a shrug, knocking his shoulder into his brother’s. “Where’ve _you_ been?”

“Here! Where I’m supposed to be!”

“I think you’re stressing worse than Rachel.”

“She was stressing?”

“She’s fine now. Obviously.”

“Hello Marco,” Keith said, coming up to stand next to Lance.

Marco squinted at him. “Keith,” he said, a little gruffly. “Are you planning on hogging my brother all night?”

“Yes,” Keith said, like it was nothing at all. “If he’ll let me.”

“I’ll let you,” Lance choked out.

Marco threw his hands in the air and whirled away.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance’s parents gave teary-eyed, mostly nonsensical toasts that made Lance clutch his wine glass and lean against Keith and work his hardest not to cry. Keith shoved their chairs a little closer together and slipped an arm around him and kissed his cheek every time Lance sniffed, and Lance’s mother held Isabel’s hand while she spoke and Kim gazed adoringly up at Lance’s father while he told a rambling story about Rachel when she was small, promising to climb to the sky and bring everyone a star.

The breaking point was when Nick’s moms stood up and gave their separate and sweet little speeches, gesturing with their hands and smiling wide at Nick and Rachel, crowded together at the front of the hall and looking teary-eyed themselves. It was the way they said Rachel’s name, all affectionate and smooth and warm, and then the way they said together, their voices echoing in the hall _Welcome to the family_.

Lance cried against Keith’s shoulder and Keith rubbed his back and whispered: “I told you it was nice.”

Lance tried to summon up the will to say “shut up” or “I love you” but all he could manage was a stilted nod. He sniffed all the way through dinner and dessert, and he sniffed while Rachel and Nick shoved cupcakes in each other’s faces, and he sniffed when Rachel whirled Nick onto the dance floor and pressed close to him under the lights.

“Weddings are nice,” Keith said while they watched the newlyweds dance. His arm was still tight around Lance, and so easy to lean in to, and he rubbed idle circles against Lance’s elbow.

“Yeah,” Lance said, watching the fluttering shape of Rachel’s hem as she moved, smiling hugely at Nick.

“D’you think Shiro and Adam’s wedding will be like this?”

Lance hummed. “Maybe,” he said, squeezing Keith’s knee. “You should ask them.”

“I don’t want to jinx it.”

“They’re going to be happy,” Lance insisted. “I know it. We’re going to go to their wedding and you’re going to bawl like a big baby and Adam and Shiro are going to make sure you’re in every single photo.”

“You’re just sappy because you’ve been crying.”

“I’m emotional, you insensitive egg tart.”

“What I’m hearing is a little bit of insult and a little bit of endearment.”

“I can’t control what you hear.”

 

* * *

 

“You’ve been crying,” Hunk said when he trekked his way through the sea of tables to find them.

“You too,” Lance said. “Not Keith, though.”

“That’s because he has no feelings.”

“I’m right here,” Keith grumbled. “I have lots of feelings, thank you very much.”

And Hunk and Lance smiled at him because yes, they knew.

 

* * *

 

 

They danced together.

More or less.

At one point, Lance had both twins hanging off his shoulders. Later, Rachel shoved her way between Keith and Lance, shouting “SORRY” and immediately weeping in Lance’s arms. And again later, the three of them shuffled to the side and watched Marco twirl Lance’s mother, and the air tasted like laughter. It was all very nice.

“I feel sappy,” Lance sighed.

“As you should,” Hunk said.

Keith, for his part, oozed a sort of faux confidence that gave him an exaggerated swagger that made Lance laugh and love him, fiercely and obnoxiously, everywhere they went. For someone so naturally graceful, he had no sense of rhythm, which always surprised Lance: Keith, doing his best to saunter and looking half-anxious with every movement, always had his equally natural awkwardness amplified in these odd vulnerable moments: Lance, catching him off-guard in the kitchen or the bedroom; or Adam, saying something to disarm Keith and make him trip over his feet; or music, just music, to make him frown at the ceiling and shrug and pretend, in that special Keith way of his, that he knew what he was doing.

“I can’t dance,” he said, four times.

“Yes,” Lance said gleefully.

“You’re both embarrassing,” Hunk said, fond and letting himself be dragged back onto the dance floor with its lights and its songs.

“Do it with style,” Keith said, seriously enough to make Lance double over in laughter.

“Do _what_ with style!”

“Everything, Hunk!” Keith paused, and the three of them were standing uselessly in the middle of the hall while Nadia and Sylvio twirled around in a shrieking circle nearby. “I’m very stylish,” he said eventually, thoughtfully.

“Are you.”

“Mhm.”

“You have, like, no rhythm. Your inner metronome is broken. Completely smashed. Dropped from a high rooftop.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Broken,” Hunk repeated mournfully. “And yet, I love you all the same.”

Keith beamed, and Lance watched all this unfold with warmth in his heart and fireworks in his fingertips. He dragged them both in for a hug that had them teetering in a laughing, loud bundle of three, Keith swearing as they half-fell and then immediately apologizing to anyone who was in hearing range.

“Oh my god, Keith,” Hunk sighed.

“Eh,” Lance said with a shrug. “Don’t censor yourself.”

“I swear too much,” Keith grumbled, and he was right, and that was what made him charming.

 

* * *

 

 

With the windows covered and the lights dimmed and everyone laughing and all the lights flashing, Lance lost track of time and how it drifted by. Nick and Rachel were making their rounds around the hall, which was slowly emptying, and Nadia and Sylvio had started something of a game of chicken with Luis storming around after them. Lisa, Lance was sure, had told Rachel about her pregnancy: they had spent several minutes holding onto each other and crying and laughing and saying things that sounded like they were half-nonsense. Hunk complained that his shoes were pinching and frowned at Keith’s pouting and wandered away to find his parents, anyways. Matias had taken over, ahem, DJ duties and was loudly proclaiming that he took “no requests and no criticisms.”

Lance felt a little like he was observing everything in a dreamy bubble: not quite there and not quite away, either; a comfortable in between that made everything seem sharp and blurry at once, made his soul feel light and his skin feel warm. It was as if the wedding was still coming, as if he was still waiting for it, like he’d wake up any moment back in their apartment, with Red and with Hunk and with Keith and all of them settled and quiet and waiting for the summer to begin in earnest.

“Hunk abandoned us,” Keith mumbled, his hand warm at the small of Lance’s back. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his hair elastic and his ponytail so his hair hung loose and dark around his face and cast shadows over his cheeks and his chin as the lights flashed around them and Matias yelled something nonsensical into the microphone.

“He’s always with us,” Lance said and nudged his nose to Keith’s, just to relish in the soft feel of his skin, just to revel in the unfurling warmth all along his bones that came with this easy closeness, this delicate touch.

“You’re still sappy, huh?”

“I’m always sappy.”

“I’m learning,” Keith said thoughtfully, his hand shifting to settle at Lance’s hip, drawing them that little closer together. “That weddings make you all soft and stuff.”

“Soft and stuff,” Lance echoed with a roll of his eyes. “You should be a writer. You should write poems and draw word-pictures about my eyes.”

“I could write a hundred poems about your eyes,” Keith said. “But I don’t think you’d like them.”

“Write them anyways,” Lance said, his lips twitching into a smile, the curve of it pressing into his cheeks and making his eyes tingle and the light in his veins waver and wiggle and flare into stars.

“You’re demanding.”

“You don’t seem to mind.”

“I don’t.”

Keith was smiling, small and sweet, when Lance looked at him—really looked at him, to catch the sharp shape of his nose and the edges of his eyes and the softness of his lips. They were so close, like this, like any moment Keith would shift his hold and tug Lance into him and Lance would go, willingly and loudly and happily, overflowing with the want of it all.

“I saw you smiling,” Lance said, pressing his fingers to Keith’s jaw to feel the shape of it and him. He liked the give of Keith’s skin and the rounded feel of his jawbone, pressing up against Lance’s fingertips and promising that Keith was solid.

“I’m smiling right now,” Keith said.

“During the ceremony,” Lance said, or laughed, and his fingers settled at Keith’s chin. “You were smiling at me.”

“I think you were smiling at _me_.”

“I was.”

“Well then,” Keith said, his smile growing.

Blossoming.

“Well then,” Lance agreed.

Far away—far, far, _far_ away—Nick was bickering goodnaturedly with Matias and Matias was changing the music too quickly, too suddenly.

And here, with the cacophony of light and sound and love around them, Keith said: “I think you owe me a dance.”

“Huh,” Lance said. “And here I thought I owed you a hundred.”

“A thousand.”

“As many as you want,” Lance laughed and leaned in for a kiss that was lingering and sweet. It was hard to pull back, even when he wanted to, and harder still to pull further than a breath away.

“What’re you thinking about?” Keith said, too close for Lance to see him properly.

“Weird stuff,” Lance promised. “Let’s go.”

Matias still hadn’t settled on a song and Nick was getting louder and Veronica was laughing and following Luis and the twins around the hall. Dancing had ground to a halt and people milled about the floor in pairs or little groups, and Lance had long since lost sight of Hunk, though he imagined he could hear Hunk, somewhere, telling his parents stories and smiling wide.

“I’m going to teach you a dance,” Lance said, whirling and pulling Keith in for another kiss.

“I can’t dance,” Keith said.

“Don’t worry, even you can do this one.”

“Is it a waltz?”

“No!”

“Foxtrot?”

“Definitely not.”

Keith shook his head and wound one arm around Lance’s shoulders, his other hand lifting from Lance’s hip to snatch hold of his hand. They were both a little sweaty, a little clammy, when Keith wound their fingers together.

“Go on,” Keith said, pressing his forehead to Lance’s.

Matias skipped another song, and then another, cycling through upbeat pop songs Lance half-recognized and rushing by the chicken dance.

“Aha!” Matias shrieked into the microphone. “Folks of all ages and species—”

“Oh my god,” Nick moaned, his voice echoing faintly through the speakers.

“—it’s time for a little Hall and Oates! A wedding staple! A song for lovers!”

“I am literally never going to talk to you again.”

“I’m dedicating this one to my marvelous cousin, to our glorious groom and to his wife-to-be—wait—wife-that-is!”

“Who needs music,” Keith scoffed and they laughed together, the sound and the feel of it shaking between them and drowning out everything else, drowning out the stutter of Lance’s heart and the burn of his incomplete tattoos and his thousand growing daydreams.

“The music comes from within,” he sniffed.

“Sappy,” Keith observed. “Cheesy.”

“It’s a wedding, Keith! If I’m not sappy now, when will I be?”

“All the time,” Keith said seriously. “Show me this dance of yours.”

Lance grinned. “It goes like this,” he said, or whispered, and the hall was quiet around them while Matias and Nick argued with the music and each other, quiet while the wedding began its slow wind down and into the rest of their lives, and quiet while Lance pulled Keith in to a gentle sway.

 

* * *

 

“Even you can sway.”

“Mhm.”

“Teeter on your feet a little. Some old school middle school slow dancing...school.”

“Mhm.”

“We’re barely moving and yet—and yet!—we’re dancing.”

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes?”

“You’re rambling.”

“Yeah. _Yeah_ , a little. But you like it.”

“I love it.”

 

* * *

 

 

Matias got the music started eventually, triumphantly roaring with the promised Hall and Oates. Lance hummed along until Keith kissed him soundly, squeezing his hand and keeping him close, and everything was warm, and everything was peaceful, and Lance was surprised he could hear at all.

 

* * *

 

“Do you want to sit down?” Keith asked, four songs later.

“No,” Lance replied, a little pleading in his voice, a little begging to his tone.

“Good.”

“Good.”

* * *

 

 

It was hard to let go, to pull back, to interrupt the soft rainfall of Keith’s kisses. So Lance didn’t, and Keith didn’t, and they stayed like that until they forgot to keep moving, and the earth danced for them, shifting under Lance’s feet and showing him all the stars in the universe.

The music was nothing, almost, just background noise and, sometimes, a beat under Lance’s feet that pulsed through his dress shoes and clambered up his feet and ankles. His thoughts were less words and more urges: the aching desire to touch and be touched, to stay like this for as long as the world would let them, to whisper _I love you_ even when it was clearly inadequate, clearly a failure on the part of language as a whole to capture exactly what he wanted to say.

So he said nothing, and he heard nothing, and he felt the sun between them, warm and bright and soothing. It shone like a promise he couldn’t articulate, but he knew that they shared it between them, a shining promise of a promise that he saw in Keith’s smile and heard in his breaths.

And then Hunk’s voice came over the speakers, and he cleared his throat, and he said in a mumble that echoed like a shriek: “Hello, yes, earth to lovebirds, Hunk to Klance—”

Lance threw back his head with a groan. “Why does he do this!”

“Because it bothers you,” Keith replied with a snicker.

“—I am _leaving_ and if you two would please stop gazing into each other’s eyes long enough to say goodbye to me, I would appreciate it.” A pause. “You’re very cute.”

Keith laughed, loud and properly, and Lance groaned again and stormed across the floor to seize the microphone from Hunk.

 

* * *

 

The crowd of them waved and cheered Rachel and Nick into their car, Rachel’s hair littered with the fabric flower petals and her teeth flashing as her smile grew and grew. Luis slapped the roof of their car with a shout for them to drive safely, and Rachel promised to come say goodbye in the morning, before they started on their slow journey to Halifax.

“Halifax,” Keith said, while they watched the newlyweds pull away. “I’ve never been that far east.”

“I’ve made it to Montreal,” Lance said with a shrug. “Charlottetown, once.”

“There’s a huge distance between those, Lance.”

“Not as huge as you think.”

“Do you know how numbers work?”

“Whatever, arts student.”

“We should take a trip,” Keith said thoughtfully, his hand warm in Lance’s. “I mean, a vacation.”

“This is a vacation,” Lance mumbled while heat rushed to his cheeks. “This is a trip.”

Keith hummed and kissed the corner of his mouth and Lance wondered what it would be like to see the sea with Keith.

 

* * *

 

 

Everyone was tired when they got back. Veronica was grumpy and Isabel was tipsy and Marco clapped Keith on the back, once, and everything seemed surreal and dreamlike, still, to Lance. He watched his mother and step-mother wobble their way up the stairs like he’d seen them do so many times before, and he listened to his sister complain about her research, the exhaustion in her fingers, about the way Marco snored loud enough to wake the country. He clung on to his brother when Marco pulled him in for a hug, and he whispered _I love you, too_ , and he snickered at the creak of Marco’s back when he stretched.

He pulled Keith down the hall to his little, old bedroom. They got ready for bed, together, shoulders and elbows knocking as they went and Lance’s smile never fading. Comfortable in his sleep clothes and tasting freshness on his teeth and feeling sleep tug at his eyes, Lance turned away from shutting the door to see Keith looking at him.

Looking at him.

“Hey,” Lance said.

“Hey,” Keith said, and pushed Lance back against the door with a kiss that had Lance’s ears ringing with delicious deja vu.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith saw him. He always saw him. He saw Lance in the morning and in the evening, in the winter and in the summer, in the sun and in the rain. He saw Lance and he knew Lance, knew the delicate thrum of his pulse in his wrists when he was afraid or overwhelmed, knew the way to catch Lance when he came undone on their bed, knew the sleepy groan of his voice when Lance didn’t sleep well.

Keith saw him, and knew him.

And Keith saw that Lance saw, and knew that Lance knew, and that their forever swirled between them like so much dust, and so much starlight, some eternal return, the familiar paths that took them away and then back again.

 _I want to marry you_ , Lance could hear himself say even as the words stuck in his throat. _I want to see forever with you_.

And the fear of it made him steady, and the surety of it made him strong.

 

* * *

 

 

He was awake. Too awake.

Turned into Keith’s arms and with his hand spread over Keith’s heart, listening to Keith’s sleeping breaths and counting the moments of the night as they drifted by, Lance felt himself grow more and more anxious about the coming day and the coming exhaustion he would feel in his bones.

He could wake Keith up, if he wanted to. If he needed to. He could kiss Keith awake and say “I’m awake” and Keith would understand press kisses to his freckles and promise that the day would be alright, and bright, and that they would be alright, and bright.

“I don’t need to,” he mumbled to Keith’s collarbone. “I’m okay.”

Keith made a sleepy, half-awake grunt.

Lance smiled.

He fell asleep, eventually. He woke with daggers at his eyes and irritation under his skin. He slipped away from Keith’s comfortable hold and went for a run that dragged at his lungs, and he slowed to a walk down the familiar paths of his old neighbourhood, and he came home to find his brother at the table with four slices of toast and a too-huge cup of coffee.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Marco said, when Lance paused in the arch of the kitchen entry and frowned at him.

Lance considered this. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Me neither.”

Marco tilted his head. He pushed the little plate of toast to the middle of the table. “Coffee?” he offered.

“No, thanks.”

“Want to talk?”

Lance opened his mouth to say _no_ and then caught himself in a smile. “You first,” he said, and went to sit at the table.

Veronica found them like that, with the bread gone and the carton of orange juice open on the table. She put her hands on her hips and looked between them and when they said they had come to no conclusions and had found no answers, she said: “Insomnia runs in the family.”

Lance rolled his eyes and Veronica ruffled his hair and called him sweaty and Marco made another pot of coffee and Keith came looking for Lance, all bed-headed and with his shirt on backwards.

Marco shoved a cup of coffee in his hands. Keith squinted at it.

“It’s not poisoned,” Lance promised.

“You never really know,” Marco sniffed.

Keith drank it anyway, with a firm “thank you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Lance was eighteen-years-old when he woke up after a Halloween res party with a god awful hangover and dragged himself out of bed to run through the early-winter November chill. He remembered very little of the actual run, or much of the rest of the morning, but he remembered a hungover craving for fast food and he remembered the little orange fluff ball waddling through the grass in the park at the bottom of the hill. He remembered the way it snowed that day, and he remembered the exhausted face of his roommate and the way he’d brought the little, rescued hamster a bag of sunflower seeds.

Lance was nineteen-years-old when he realized he wanted to marry that boy, and when he started to make nervous plans to tell said boy all this and all the more that waited to be told. He scribbled in his sketchbook while Keith and his mother bickered over Scrabble, and he rubbed at the back of his neck while the twins begged Keith to push them on the swings, and he mulled over the universe when he and Hunk and Keith went out to Hunk’s family yard and stared up at the stars.

Yes, the stars.

He would be twenty, soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just an epilogue left
> 
> and if you're wondering, YES i really just wrote ALL OF THIS to have keith and lance dance to you make my dreams come true okay


	5. epilogue

Keith kept boxes of photos and polaroids in their front closet, meticulously but vaguely labelled with names or months and years. Lance knew there was at least— _ at least _ —two boxes with his name on them: LANCE, in Keith’s deliberate capital letters; LANCE II, in purple permanent marker. Keith was a quiet sort of hoarder in this way: he gathered things up and pressed his nose and his cheeks and the edges of his eyes to them, like he was letting the memory of the moment seep into his skin, and then he’d tuck everything away and store it all with care and subdued organization where no one would be able to see them. Prying eyes, Lance thought. Fear. Love.

Sometimes, Keith was complicated.

There were more boxes, at Shiro’s. Taped and retaped, labelled and relabelled. On their first night, with Keith sitting on his hands and scowling from his place on his old bed, Lance pulled boxes from the top shelf of the mostly-empty closet and studied the change in Keith’s writing from year to year. One box was labelled only with a star, drawn clumsily on green tape and in black marker, and inside was a scattered collection of photos of mountains and the back of Shiro’s head and shelves of books and something that looked like the sky.

“It’s stuff,” Keith grumbled and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Lance smiled. “It’s just stuff!”

“Stuff,” Lance echoed, sweet as he could.

“Feelings and stuff!”

Lance hummed and closed the box.

And then there were albums, tucked under the bed. They scrambled to the floor together and pulled them out, one by one, and Lance settled against Keith’s shoulder and watched Keith flip the pages, listened to the delicate plastic sticking of them, the crinkle of the edges and much-loved shapes in each photo. Sometimes Keith had a story to tell, his hand settled over a face or a place, and sometimes he was quiet for page after page, like he was remembering as much as sharing. They stared like that until Lance’s eyes started to sag and his travel-induced exhaustion started to win over the fluttering, bursting well of love in his chest.

They climbed onto the bed and Lance pulled Keith to him and they fell asleep like that, pressed and tangled together and with an unfinished “good night” and a half-said “I love you” held comfortably between them. 

 

* * *

 

Keith’s homecoming came after a week of loud Scrabble games, the sore sight of Marco and Luis trying to outdo each other at poorly organized drinking games (Jenga was usually involved), and one entire day spent with the twins latched onto Lance’s shoulders. 

“A little chaos is nice,” Keith told Lance, two days before they left and an hour before they realized they should pack.

“Uh huh,” Lance said with a grin.

“A  _ little _ , I said.”

But everyone was already used to Keith, and Isabel was already good at spotting when his brain started to wiggle and complain in his skull, and nobody batted an eye when Keith whirled away from the table one night and climbed into the pantry.

Just for the quiet.

The morning of their flight, Hunk sniffed into Keith’s neck and held them both tight enough to bruise. Keith wiped his cheeks and Lance promised to send pictures of Red as soon as they saw her, and Hunk promised he’d see them soon, he’d be home soon.

And that was almost enough to set Lance off, but he managed to choke out: “Yeah.”

Isabel and Lance’s mother drove them to the airport, and Rachel and Nick sent photos from Halifax, and everyone else gathered on the battered front lawn and Luis hugged Keith so tight Keith’s feet left the ground. Lance smiled and whirled the twins into a hug and smiled some more and revelled in the attention of his siblings and smiled even more when his father told Keith to “come back soon.”

A little chaos, Lance thought with his nose pressed to the window, with his eyes trained back to see as much of his waving siblings and niblings and father and Kim as he could—A little chaos, Lance thought, was very nice.

“Keith,” Lance’s mother said, just as they turned to start towards the meandering and noisy security queue. When they looked back at her, together, she was smiling, with her hands spread and her cheeks dimpled and covered in freckles that were so much like Lance’s own. Isabel was behind her, her nose a breath from the curly, wonderful shower of Lance’s mother’s hair.

“Yeah?” Keith said after a moment, sounding choked enough that Lance wanted to take his hand and hold tight.

But he held still. He felt his own smile on his lips, the warm weight of it.

His mother’s fingers twitched. “You’re part of us now,” she said.

Just like that.

“It was so nice to meet you,” Keith said, and this time Lance did take his hand and held on tight, anchoring them both to the cool floor and amidst the din of the airport.

“Look after him for us.”

“I try.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance sighed with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “We’re leaving now!”

“Fly safely!” his mother called to their backs.

“Have a safe flight!” Isabel corrected, her laughter bouncing about her voice and making Lance duck his head under the weight of growing smile.

Keith was shaking a little, while they waited in the security line. Just a shimmer of a vibration that made it seem like he was about to fall over or fly to the roof like a balloon. Lance kept their fingers twisted together and toyed with the edges of their boarding passes with his other hand. They shuffled forward, then stopped, then shuffled some more.

“I think your mom doesn’t hate me,” Keith said. He sounded surprised.

Lance pressed his grin to Keith’s cheek and took a long whiff of his skin, his hair, his Keith-ness.

“Weirdo,” Keith mumbled, but sagged into Lance and finally, finally stilled.

“Welcome to the family,” Lance said against his skin. “Welcome to  _ my _ family, actually.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re part of me, too,” Lance continued, his heart soaring in his chest, his stomach fluttering and overflowing with grateful, excited heat. “Forever and always.”

And Keith caught him a kiss that was so warm and quick Lance teetered on his feet, felt the world shift and turn and tilt under him, felt the fluttering grow and calm and become peaceful waters.

“Ew,” he sighed and Keith pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth. “PDA. Embarrassing.”

“Whoops,” Keith grunted.

Lance snickered.

It wasn’t that he felt better, or clearer, or happier. He just—felt. Like a million things had fallen into place and all he needed to do now was step his way to the future. He hummed the rest of the way through security, and Keith relaxed enough to finally tug his novel from his backpack and finish it. They walked up and down the quiet domestic terminal and Keith went through the books at two stores before he finally settled on—

“Godzilla?” Lance said.

“I like movie novelizations,” Keith sniffed.

“I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

“It’ll be trash,” Keith said, sounding wistful. “It’ll be complete garbage.”

“You’re so strange.”

They celebrated the end of a good visit with expensive airport beer and an expensive airport poutine and Keith read his surprisingly inexpensive Godzilla novel and Lance sent Hunk an update. They leaned against each other on a bench by their gate, with Lance’s hand on Keith’s knee and Keith’s fingers turning the pages of his novel in delicate flips.

“Are the Holts going to hate me?” Lance mumbled, rubbing his thumb against the worn fabric of Keith’s pants.

“Nope.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Lance smiled.

He imagined getting down on his knees—on one knee?—right then, right there, and shouting  _ marry me, Keith _ . He imagined borrowing a pen and stealing Keith’s arm to write the words against his skin, or against Keith’s boarding pass and waiting until he noticed to declare his own undying love. He imagined presenting Keith with a gift—a ring, a star, one delicious egg or even their own hamster—and saying  _ be my husband _ in front of all of Keith’s family, in the home Keith had grown up in.

All of his fantasies ended with Keith, his cheeks flushed and his eyes shining, saying  _ yes _ .

A thousand times he imagined Keith saying:  _ yes, Lance, I will marry you _ .

On the uncomfortable bench in the bustling airport, while Keith read his Godzilla book and the poutine and beer settled nicely in Lance’s belly, he pressed a kiss to Keith’s shoulder and thought about forever and how very close it seemed. 

 

 

* * *

 

But what was a proposal? An engagement, a wedding, a marriage? Was it their lives as they were, their quiet steps around their little apartment, rings on their fingers while they held Red? Was it any different than what they were already doing, what they were already planning, in their steady way? In November, they would celebrate their second anniversary—but  _ two _ and  _ second _ felt so small compared to what Lance felt in his chest and in his fingers and toes. The two years didn’t account for all that had happened between them, all their small and large arguments, or the breathless way they had learned to melt together on thier bed, or the long walks they had taken with Hunk, or Keith’s books or Lance’s runs or the way the night sometimes seemed huge enough to swallow them both—

Two years, not even.

Where was the time? The evidence of what he felt? The proof that already burned on his skin and scattered like fireworks between them? Something to justify to the ache he felt when Keith was more than an arms-length away, when Keith was asleep next to him, when Keith muttered to himself in the shower before an exam or when Keith stepped into the hall to greet him when he came back from a run—

Something, anything!

No—not anything.

_ Marry me _ , Lance wanted to write against the sky.  _ Stay with me forever _ .

He’d put it on his skin, for Keith to find and press kisses to.

 

 

* * *

 

Keith woke Lance with a whisper.

“Huh?” Lance sighed, licking his lips and lifting his head just long enough to realize his neck ached. He grunted and snuggled back against Keith’s shoulder, blinked his bleary, sleepy eyes at Keith’s knees, at Keith’s book held open on his thigh.

“Lance,” Keith whispered again. “I need—” He broke off.

The plane hummed around them. The air felt stiff, the seats too close together. The man in their row’s aisle seat kept shifting and making quiet grumbly grunting noises to himself. Before Lance had fallen asleep, he had stared over Keith’s head at Lance until Lance had scowled and pressed close to Keith’s side.

Lance found Keith’s wrist, settled on the seat between them, and pressed his fingers to Keith’s pulse. 

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” he mumbled.

Keith huffed a laugh. “Me too.”

Lance smiled and rubbed his thumb over the jut of Keith’s wrist bone. No hint of a bruise on his hands, today. It made his hands seem stark, and warm. It made Lance want to press slow kisses to Keith’s wrists and palms and each of his fingers. It made him want to leave marks of his own, teeth against skin, Keith’s name dead on his tongue and Keith’s breath loud in his ears.

“I’m getting distracted,” he said.

“You’re always distracted.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you.”

“Lance,” Keith said again, not sharp but quick, unsteady in the sudden urgency. He sucked in a breath. Someone further up the plane burst into raucous laughter. 

“What’s wrong?”

“The boxes,” Keith said in a rush. “My boxes.”

Lance rubbed his cheek against Keith’s shoulder, the last of his drowsiness seeping away. “The ones in our closet?”

“Yes. And—the ones at home. At Shiro’s, I mean.”

“You have  _ more _ boxes?”

“Yes,” Keith said gruffly. “I have—a few.”

“Okay,” Lance said slowly, sounding out the word in his dry mouth. Keith’s pulse carried on under his fingers, a delicate and soothing thrum that felt like home, and rest, and peace and quiet and noise and laughter. “What about them?”

“Would you—” Keith broke off again. Lance could feel Keith’s breath on his hair, warm and frustrated. “Do you want to look in them?”

Did he want—

Lance sat up so they were eye-to-eye, his cheeks heating at the sight of Keith’s own red-tinged cheeks. He swallowed. Keith’s wrist twitched in his hold, like he wanted to pull away but didn’t, and something like pride swelled and mingled with everything—everything!—else that swirled inside of Lance.

He took a long breath in.

And let it out.

And said: “Do you want me to look in them?”

“Yes,” Keith said, like all of his turmoil and struggle in the moments before had dwindled into nothing, like Lance had given him something to hold on to and be sure of.

“Okay,” Lance breathed. “Okay.”

And he knew he had been given something important, something precious, and he knew that he would hold on to it carefully, and he knew that he would love it for all of his days.

 

 

* * *

 

On the third morning of their visit, Pidge kicked down Keith’s bedroom door and dragged Keith out of his bed and away from Lance.

“Get up!” she snapped.

“Fuck off,” Keith snapped back, arms flailing and hair wild.

“I made you an eye appointment!”

“ _ Double _ fuck off!”

Lance, groggy and slow, sat up and dragged the blankets tight around his shoulders and watched them bicker and wrestle. Pidge pulled Keith’s hair once and he threatened to bite her and Lance had a feeling he was getting a glimpse, just a teeny tiny peek, of what they had been like as kids.

“You can’t even see, you dumbass!”

“I can see just fine!”

“You’re going to take a stupid volleyball to the face!”

“I’m not  _ stupid _ —”

Lance scrubbed a hand over his face and yawned. Red emerged from her cave to make chittering, angry noises at all of them.

And then Shiro stormed to the open doorway and barked: “ _ Katie _ .”

Pidge released Keith and Keith fell on his face.

“Thank fuck,” Keith mumbled against the floor.

“Like  _ you’re _ not in trouble,” Shiro snapped.

“Hi Shiro,” Lance piped up from the bed.

And then he got to peek around Adam and into the kitchen to watch Keith roll his eyes through a Shiro-lecture and Pidge chew her nails and glare at the floor through a Shiro-admonishment.

And Shiro finished it all by saying: “And you  _ will _ go to the appointment.”

“I’m a grown-ass adult!”

“Go get your eyes checked!”

“I just drove around Ontario for two weeks just fine!”

“It wasn’t all of Ontario,” Lance told Adam. Adam shrugged.

“Great,” Shiro deadpanned. “Because  _ that _ makes me feel better.”

And Lance bared his teeth to hide his smile. 

 

 

* * *

 

A little chaos, indeed.

In Keith’s boxes, his home, and his arguments with Adam and his bickering with Shiro. In his outrage when he was finally—officially—told to get himself some glasses. 

In the way Keith choked when Colleen Holt greeted Lance and said, “I hear you’re very nice.”

In the way Keith seemed shocked to his core every time they witnessed Shiro and Adam being comfortable and comfortably intimate with each other, and in the way Lance had to imagine—and work  _ hard _ to imagine—what that must feel like, and in the way Keith tried to explain what it was like to see them like this, to see them  _ finally _ like this.

Chaos, in the way Adam and Shiro and Keith and Pidge and her brother and parents and now Lance all crowded into Shiro’s kitchen and bickered until Adam and Shiro finally agreed to set a date.

“Next summer!” Shiro shouted over the din.

And Keith looked ready to faint.

And Adam hid his mouth behind his hands and then he and Shiro looked at each other and both seemed to—combust.

Yeah, a little chaos.

 

 

* * *

 

And quiet moments, where Keith would drag them both back to his bedroom and throw himself on the bed and decompress with a groan. And Lance would scramble up next to him and run his fingers through Keith’s hair until they were both pleased and settled and comfortable.

Quiet moments, where Lance would find Shiro and Keith with their heads bowed together in the kitchen, smiling; the quiet sound of Shiro’s laughter and the way Keith always looked up at his brother, no matter how tall he got. Like this, Lance could see the small things Keith had inherited, or copied, from Shiro: the straight line of his back, the steady shape of his shoulders, the gruff bark of his voice that now made him easy to hear in a match, in a crowded room.

Quiet moments, where Keith and Lance would return to the boxes and then that one, astounding moment when Keith showed Lance one of the few pictures he had of his father and said: “I wish he could meet you.”

 

 

* * *

 

Yes, Lance was almost twenty.

And his world and his family was growing, still.

 

 

* * *

 

He stole that precious photo of Keith’s father, one night. He wandered out of Shiro’s apartment in his bare feet, and trooped down the hall, and down and out the front doors, and he looked up at the now familiar prairie sky, with its endless expanse of darkness and the twinkling stars that seemed to look down at him.

There was less wind, here, than at home, than at his and Keith’s home three hours away. But even in the stillness, the air felt fresh and renewed, and the heat of the day had faded into a memory under Lance’s feet.

He lifted the photo against the sky and saw, in the lights of the street and from the building behind him, his partner’s father smiling down at him. Lance’s left hand trembled, and then he caught himself, and he cleared his throat.

“Uh, hello,” he said to the photo. “Mr. Tran I—” He broke off with a toothy grimace, his face stretching around it and his embarrassment making his shoulders burn. He shook his head, cleared his throat again.

“I would have liked to meet you,” Lance said, with Keith’s father smiling against the stars. He took a breath. “He’s good, you know. He’s happy. He’s got Shiro and Adam and—me and Hunk and Red. He misses you. Keith, I mean. But—maybe you know that.”

The night was quiet around him, the street empty and the lights a bright and deep orange. The photo felt fragile in his hands, so important and irreplaceable. It felt like a piece of Keith, here on the sidewalk with him.

“I’m going to marry him,” Lance said. “I wanted to tell you. And—I am going to take care of him. I’m going to love him every day of my life.”

He waited for the rest to come, for the words to flutter their way to his tongue and fall from his lips. 

But maybe that was all.

Just a smile against the stars, and a promise.

When he crawled back into bed, Keith pulled him close and pressed a warm kiss to his forehead.

“Trouble sleeping?” he mumbled.

Lance burrowed against him and let out a contented breath. He danced his fingers along Keith’s ribs and relished Keith’s arms around him and said: “No. I’m good.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for waiting, and for all your support and excitement and encouragement!!!! i hope you enjoyed this fic!! and i can’t wait to share the next parts of the series with you. :’)


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